This Alien Shore (36 page)

As he left, he could see the Earth holo flicker back to life before her.

T
HEY FINALLY unloaded the drugs, at a small private station at the far side of the node. Some billionaire tech baron owned the place, but Sumi suspected that the man who gave them their entrance codes to the estate and later paid them in unregistered cash chits wasn't working for him at that moment. It was a pretty bizarre setup, with fantastic, glittering air-lock gates that looked like they belonged on an amusment station, and surreal architecture to match. But when you were rich, Sumi thought, you could have whatever environment you wanted. Wasn't that why so many of Earth's financial elite had moved out here, when outspace was first colonized?

The price they got for their cargo wasn't half of what they could have gotten elsewhere, and Allo clearly was having second thoughts about the sale. Sumi watched him stand silently with furrowed brow, no doubt weighing the buyer's bottom line against the manifold risks of keeping the drugs on board. In the end he nodded stiffly, and the station's bots began to move the crates out. Sumi thought of warning their contact to wipe the bot logs clean when he was done, so that there'd be no record of the unloading—for all of their contact's tough attitude, he didn't seem like a professional smuggler, and might not realize the importance of that—but Allo caught his eye and shook his head sharply, slightly. The man had dickered price with them well past the point of polite negotiation. If he was so stupid that he didn't realize that a simple bot log could be used to convict him at some future date, let him pay the price for his ignorance.

They had Tam do one last scan for surveillence activity—as promised, all cams had been turned off for the duration of the delivery—and then they took off again, to deal with their next order of business.

The girl.

She was the real reason for the sale, of course. Allo could have gotten a much better price on Paradise for what they were carrying, but Sumi knew his captain, knew he liked his business clean, knew that he wouldn't want to deal with a puzzle like this girl while his holds were stuffed with enough contraband to earn them all life sentences from the feds. And so he had accepted lower profits on one deal in order to focus all his attention on the other ... which said much for what he thought of her potential value in the open market.

The girl ...

Sumi couldn't stop thinking about her. He'd done so even during the unloading, when his attention should have been focused on their work, and on watching for trouble. That wasn't like him. He liked women well enough—he enjoyed them immensely when the shipping schedule allowed for indulgence, and when station custom was obliging—but it was rare that one of them got under his skin the way this one had. Was it those strange blue eyes, or something in the taste of her skin? Or was it the unfathomable mystery of her, those strange mood changes, her secret past? Or was it (this was really alarming) that she was an Earthie? That she was the first Earthie who had ever responded to him with something other than revulsion, and he was curious to see just how far her tolerance would go?

He shivered and tried to focus on the screen before him, watching numbers scroll across it as the small ship made for open space once more. Allo liked the fact that his first mate was steady, reliable, unshakable. Allo wouldn't like the fact that right now Sumi was thinking about the soft touch of Earthie fingers, the musky smell that lingered about her flesh. No, he wouldn't like that at all. Sumi felt his wellseeker stir as he input the data for the next leg of their flight, scouring his biological systems for any sign of sexual arousal, chemically compensating for his fantasies. One thing was certain, he sure as hell didn't want Allo to guess what was on his mind. The captain would imagine ... well, all sorts of things.

Worse than the truth?

He had dreams that nightshift. Strange dreams, that mixed together sex and guilt and racial hatred into an odd brew indeed. Was it the lure of the forbidden that drew him to her, the fantasy of having Earth itself between his strong hands, of forcing the heat of his body into the hated mother race itself? He'd always laughed at people who talked about things like that. He knew some men who who hired Earthie whores on a regular basis, just to vent their racial hatred. He'd always looked down on them, feeling himself above such things. Was that what he wanted now? Was the hunger inside him as well, two thousand years of racial resentment just waiting for the proper forum to express itself?

If so, that was yet another reason not to indulge himself. The poor girl was hardly responsible for all the evils of Earth. He knew that intellectually, even if his glands argued otherwise. It was better not to mess with a mix of feelings like that. Better just to focus on work, put his wellseeker on automatic, and hope nobody noticed his agitation. It was only one dive to Paradise Node, and then she would be gone.

But he couldn't stop thinking about her.

T
he bed had straps attached, tough plastic bands that pulled out from one side, wrapped over the top, and clipped onto a narrow bar on the far side. Jamisia looked at them dubiously, nervously, then at Calia again.

“It's for the dive,” the Calistan said impatiently. She was clearly tired of explaining things to Jamisia, and spat out the words with the kind of disdain one usually reserves for morons. Tall, broad-shouldered, lean and muscular, she was physically well-suited for arrogance, and the sleek striped fur which the Hausman Effect had given to her people only added to her feral aura. “The headset will run all the programs to put you to sleep. In the meantime you want to be held in place, don't you?” When Jamisia said nothing, she snapped, “Or would you rather be pitched to the floor if things get rough, maybe break one of those precious Earthie bones?” She snorted in disgust and turned away from Jamisia. “Do as you like, girl. Tam'll be in later to program the headset. You can ride it out standing on your head for all I care.”

The door slid shut behind her with a finality that seemed almost personal. Jamisia stared at it for a moment, then looked back at the straps on the bed. Yes, there was apparently a damned good reason for them being there, but their presence still seemed ominous. Or was that just her paranoia speaking?

Damn,
Raven observed,
she really hates Terrans, doesn't she?

They all do,
Verina answered.
She's just the most open about it.

Not like we had anything to do with Isolation.
Derick snorted.
Okay, so our ancestors were assholes. They're dead and gone now, and we're here. Why blame us for their mistakes?

That “mistake” killed millions, and sent some colonies back to the Stone Age.
Verina's tone, as always, was utterly reasonable, even when she was discussing such volatile issues as race hatred.
There are cultures still paying the cost for that mistake. Don't ever forget it.

It's not like we did anything wrong,
Zusu said miserably.

There were reasons
—Raven began.

Yes,
Verina interrupted.
Earth reasons. Try explaining them to a colony that starved for two centuries, because Earth cut them off. Try telling such people that the reason they haven't been able to raise their population above the point of minimal survival is still because billions of people once rioted, and their leaders decided to cut off the Hausman colonies so they could pretend they didn't exist, to quell the tide of panic. Tell them that, and see if they understand.

She paused for an instant, then continued in a quieter tone:
How can they know what it's like to have ten billion people crowded on a single planet, with the only hope for escape suddenly cut off ? How can they understand the mindset of such a world, or the extremes to which it might have to resort, for the sanity of its masses? Rats in a cage will kill each other, you know, if there are too many of them confined together. Terrans aren't so very different. Our ancestors understood that, and they knew that when the cage door was suddenly slammed shut again, after two decades of hope, there'd be hell to pay. I'm not condoning what they did, mind you ... but neither can we condemn them, without understanding their world..

The Variants like to believe they're superior to us, that under the same circumstances they wouldn't turn on one another, wouldn't cut off their own children. Perhaps . . . but I suspect that's only because they haven't yet been locked in a small enough cage. To them every Terran is a diseased individual, heir to a genetic heritage of violence and irrationality
—
a heritage they imagine themselves freed from by virtue of their cultural trials. Little wonder they hate us! It's a marvel they let Terrans come to the outworlds at all. And I'm pretty sure they wouldn‘t, if the Guerans didn't force the issue. Most Variants would much rather leave us to rot in our own home system.

Their words and images filled Jamisia's head, battering her imagination from a dozen different sources at once. That was the problem when the Others argued, or even just discussed things; she felt like a battleground. “All right,” she muttered. “This is all very interesting, but it's getting us nowhere. We can hit the history books later, okay? For now, can we get back to making plans?”

To her surprise they all went along with her.
That
was a first. All of the rational ones, that is. She could still hear the most frightening one of all, the crying one, whose muffled sobs had become a counterpoint to all internal conversation. When the Others had first made their presence known, she'd almost never heard him, but by now the soft cadence of his terror had become a backdrop to almost every conversation. She didn't want to know what had frightened him. She
really
didn't want to know why his presence was slowly becoming more obtrusive. She tried to block out of her mind the day her tutor's dreamscape had shown him to her, naked and trembling and oblivious to the world around him. What would happen to her if
he
ever took over?

She drew in a deep breath, trying to shake off that image. “Look, we've got to decide—”

Her words were interupted by a soft knock on the door. She caught her breath, wondering if whoever it was had heard her whispering to herself. If so, would they think she was crazy, or something worse? At last she mustered her voice and asked who was there.

“Sumi,” came the answer.

She could feel Katlyn taking control of her body with silken ease, like a hand sliding into a cool satin glove. “Come in,” she said, and Jamisia could hear her exulting silently, that such a chance had come before the skip. Many of the Others had thought the Medusan would not come back, although Katlyn had insisted otherwise.

The door slid open and he stood there. She could see at once in his eyes that he was not wholly comfortable in her presence. Jamisia felt sorry for him, but Katlyn assured her that it was a good sign, that men always felt that way when a woman manipulated them. As if they could sense the nature of the game, without quite understanding how to exit from it.