The Serrano Succession (78 page)

"Yes. I see that. And I have to admit that even followers of the true faith have done terrible things in its name. But you're coming dangerously close to a famous old heresy, that of special election."

"Never heard of it," Goonar said. Someone tapped on his door; he said, "Come on in." Esmay Suiza stood there, looking uncertain. "Yes, Sera—do come in and join the argument. We're talking about religion."

"I don't know much about religion," Esmay said.

"That's fine—but you've met Simon, haven't you? He's a priest, from the Benignity—Simon, Sera Suiza is from Altiplano. He's just talking about special election, Sera—have you ever heard of anything like that?"

"Some of the Old Believers," Esmay said. "If you mean the idea that some are born naturally good and others naturally evil."

"Exactly," Simon said.

Goonar shrugged. "Some apples taste better than others—what's heretical about that?"

"Ahhh," Simon said, with a gleam in his eye that Goonar recognized just too late as that of an enthusiast. "Now: did God make one apple sweet and another bitter?"

"I'm not God, Simon, so I don't know," Goonar said, ducking quickly away from what promised to be a voyage-long theological exercise. "What I am is a ship captain with—up to now—a clean record in the Familias Regnant and adjoining territories. Not anymore, thanks to you. If what you say is true—"

"It is," Simon said.

"Fine, then . . . then you are just the sort of political refugee my seniors warned me about, but at least not criminal in this jurisdiction. You understand I will have to make a report—no doubt a long and tedious report—about you to both my seniors and whatever officialdom shows up at Castle Rock?"

"Of course," said Simon. "I hope it isn't too much trouble."

"It is," Goonar said, "but it has to be done. I don't suppose you know anyone in our government who could expedite this for us?"

"I'm sorry, but no," Simon said.

"Then perhaps you and Sera Suiza can thrash out the theology, while I get busy on the reports." Goonar stood up, and winked at Esmay, who was looking startled. "Only if you're willing, Sera, but he might be interested in your world's beliefs."

"Please," Simon said. "If your Old Believers are related to the Sinatians . . ." They left together, Simon talking eagerly. Goonar wondered if there was any counterbalancing profit he could show to make up for what this was going to cost.

Basil knocked. "Find out anything more?"

"Yes. I still want to wring your neck, but he's certainly no common criminal. He's a religious nut."

"He is? He seems quiet enough."

"Don't get him started on good and evil and something called special election."

"That sounds like politics."

"No . . . he was about to drag me into whether God made apples differentially sweet or they just came that way—"

Basil's eyebrows shot up. "Oh dear."

"Yes. He's a heretic to the Benignity, a nut to me, and God knows what the Patriarch would think of him, but I'm not going to keep him around to find out. We dump him on the government at Castle Rock and steal quietly away."

"Well, then. By the way—" Basil had switched to his casual voice; Goonar snorted at him, and Basil switched back. "Our hero of Xavier is making Bethya nervous."

"Why? What's she doing?"

"Bethya says she's having nightmares and won't talk about it."

"Good grief, Basil, the woman's military—of course she's not going to talk to a . . . an actress. And how does Bethya know she's having nightmares, anyway?"

"Women have their ways," Basil said. "Thing is, I was wondering if we should notify anyone."

"Who, for instance?"

"Oh . . . her family, maybe. If she needs help, they should know. And Bethya said she didn't have time to contact them back at Trinidad."

"Well . . . I suppose when we get into Zenebra we could offer to place a call for her. But I'm not going to do it behind her back. We don't have the right."

At Zenebra Station,
Terakian Fortune
crossed paths with
Terakian Favor
, with a solid fourteen hours of cargo exchange under the eyes of the Station customs officer.
Favor
had the route down the length of the Familias on that border; Goonar picked up cargo for Castle Rock, and she picked up his for Mallory, Inkman, and Takomin Roads. Goonar was glad enough to have his extra crew helping. They had removed their costumes from the fashion containers and returned the mannequins to neutral programming, so the designs could travel on to the backwoods towns awaiting them. Then both unloaded their Zenebra cargo—a matter of an hour or so for that—and Goonar, as the newer captain, invited Elias Terakian, captain of the
Favor
over for dinner.

"Well, Goonar, you're doing well, it looks like." Elias, twenty years a captain, had the assurance of that experience; in another decade he might retire to the Fathers. "You've a smart crew, the way they got that cargo shifted so fast."

"I have a message for the Fathers," Goonar said, "that needs to go by some other route."

"Ah. Well, let's hear it."

Goonar explained the whole long complicated tale, as he knew it, and Elias said nothing. When he'd finished, Elias shook his head. "You'd have done better to have a dull first run, Goonar."

"I know that," Goonar said.

"But—you've done as well as you could, I think. What about this theatrical troupe? Do you think they'll use us again?"

That hadn't occurred to Goonar. "I don't know," he said. "Bethya—their manager and star—has talked about settling somewhere and giving up touring."

"Ah. She's the redhead, isn't she?"

"Yes . . ." He knew what was coming.

"Handsome woman. Not that old. You really need to find another wife, Goonar, someone to make you comfortable between trips."

"I'm not looking for a wife," Goonar said.

"You say that now, but when you're retired . . ."

"Elias, please. Enough."

"All right, all right, I won't say any more. I'll take your message to the Fathers, and I won't mention your . . . the . . . redhead. You do know she likes you?"

"I know no such thing," Goonar said. He could feel himself reddening. "She's polite to everyone."

"None so blind . . ." Elias murmured, applying himself to his dessert.

"Do you want to meet the heretic?"

"No. What do I know about theology? Now if you'd extricated a specialist in olive genetics . . ."

Goonar laughed. "I'll tell Basil that, shall I? If you must take in fugitives, make sure they have salable information?"

Elias gave him an enigmatic look. "As a matter of fact, Goonar, that's exactly what you should do. Policy is, we don't take fugitives or mix with politics. Practically speaking . . . if you must take in a fugitive, make sure it's someone whose passage profits us."

"Um. I don't think we'll make much off this theologian—but perhaps there's a hidden treasure in the theatrical troupe. I've got that lighting in the shuttle bay now . . ."

* * *

Remembering the ease with which crew got drunk and spilled secrets, Goonar didn't permit his illicit passengers to debark at Zenebra. He offered Esmay a chance to send word home to Altiplano, but she declined at first.

"But they should know," Basil said.

"They'll just worry," Esmay said.

"Of course they'll worry," Basil said. "That's what they're supposed to do. You say they knew about the marriage—"

"That's what the captain of the ship we were on told us, yes."

"And then you just disappeared. They could think you're dead. And they could help you."

"I don't think so," Esmay said. She looked stubborn.

"I'm not comfortable with this," Goonar said finally. "I feel almost like a thief, as if I'd stolen you away."

Esmay snorted, then laughed aloud. Her laughs were rare, he'd noticed. "Not likely . . . but if you insist, Captain, I'll call home and let them know I'm fine." She was not fine, he could see that—she was kilos thinner than she had been when she came aboard, despite what he knew was a good galley, but he wasn't going to argue that. Let her family take care of her.

He would have paid for the call, but Esmay insisted on paying the toll herself. The estimated delivery time, for a regular ansible relay from Zenebra to Altiplano, was surprisingly long.

"We don't have a real-time connection," Esmay said. "At least, not unless you set it up and pay in advance. Messages are batched through. And there are what—three or four relays between?"

"So we'll be in Castle Rock, nearly, when your family gets your message—"

"Unless it makes the minimum transit. But I don't see that it makes any difference. They're hardly going to come charging to the rescue—they have their own lives."

Goonar said nothing more, but when she had gone back to the ship, he placed his own. If she were his daughter, he'd want to know what had happened by priority access. And what if Fleet reported her discharged and her family had no idea how to find her?

On the passage from Zenebra to Rockhouse Major, the main commercial docking point orbiting Castle Rock, Goonar wracked his brain to find some way to make a profit from his cargo. He talked to all of them—Simon, Betharnya, the other acting troupe members, Esmay Suiza—seizing on every scrap of information that might be useful later. Talks with Simon always ended in a theological briar patch he saw no purpose in, but the actors had a unique viewpoint of all the places they'd been, and ships they'd traveled on. The difficulty of finding sound engineers on this world—the timing of theater and music festivals—Goonar filed it all away. Esmay was sure she wouldn't get back into Fleet, not for a long time, but Goonar, thinking of her as a conduit to Brun Meager and Fleet both, plied her with Terakian & Sons trade doctrine. What they wanted from Fleet, what they wanted from the government . . . just in case she might be in a position to say something useful. All this almost kept his mind off fantasies of himself and Bethya.

Esmay pored over the meagre news available at the kiosk on Zenebra. The very meagreness worried her. If the mutiny had been crushed, in these past weeks, that should surely be in the news. Instead, she noticed talk of rising prices, of concern by traders and reassurances from Fleet. She had wanted so badly to find out about Barin, but civilians had no access to the Fleet personnel databases. Would they even tell her if something had happened? She was his wife, after all. If Admiral Serrano hadn't forced an annulment.

The shuttle down to the surface lurched and swayed as it met a cold front, and sank through it toward the landing field. Barin tried to put his mind on something else, but every time he closed his eyes, he saw that dark chamber, the glitter of headlamps on wet metal. Then Ghormley's frightened voice, and the brilliant flash. Every bounce of the shuttle reminded him of the abrupt shifts of the artificial gravity. And that scything light . . .

The shuttle's landing gear slammed into the ground; Barin grunted and looked at the others. No one was watching him; each seemed sunk in a private reverie. He hoped theirs were better than his.

Copper Mountain's reception hall looked just the same, ugly murals and all, as the first time he'd seen it. Worse, because now he wasn't a student, come for a course—now he was a casualty, loaded into an ambulance with three others as if they were slabs of meat. Someone who still might not make it, who shouldn't be cluttering up the sickbay of a fighting ship—he'd overheard that reason for shipping some of them here, for treatment downside. On the ride to the hospital, all he could see out the back was a lowering gray sky that exactly expressed his mood. But at least it wasn't a ship; the gravity wouldn't shift, or the ground split, or the air sweep off into vacuum.

His first examination did nothing to dispel his gloom. When doctors muttered and prodded at parts of yourself you couldn't see, it never meant anything good. The phrase "the best they could" occurred several times.

"I'm sorry," one of the doctors finally said. "But we're going to have to combine surgery and regen technology. You'll be off duty quite a while." He sounded almost cheerful about it. "You'll need some rehab afterwards, because of prolonged immobilization, but you should make a full recovery."

The surgeries and regen treatments took over a week. When they were done, the surgeons came in to brag about their work, and Barin realized for the first time just how narrowly he'd missed death. Both legs, both arms, pelvis, two crushed vertebrae, and a depressed skull fracture . . . and the burns.

"You're lucky to be alive," one told him. "Your ship surgeons did a good job with what they had. But you've been immobile for several months, and your muscle mass is down—" Barin could see that, now that he wasn't encased in splints and casts. "So the next thing is to get you back in motion, so you can start getting fit again."