Vale of Stars (26 page)

“You had best ask it now.”

“There were more communications between EE3 and Ship than you told me about twenty years ago,” Jene said simply.

“That’s not a question,” Costellan said.

“Don’t bandy words, Eduard. It’s not like you.”

“True. Forgive me, Jene. I have been keeping the secret for a long time. The wheels of revelation need lubricating. Yes. There were more communications between Arnson and an official planetside.”

“What was the official’s name?” Jene asked. She had come all this way to ask, even as the answer burned in her brain. But she had to
know.

“Carll Tann.”

She thought she had steeled herself against the truth she had come to suspect these past few days. But when Costellan spoke the name in his husky, dying voice, Jene reeled nonetheless. Even a confirmed believer in conspiracy has, in the dark recesses of the mind, a glimmer of doubt—a tiny spark of optimism that defies the evil all around it. To have that spark finally arrested and killed is a powerful blow, one that Jene Halfner could not have prepared herself for.

“He knew all along,” Jene said. “Arnson. He knew.”

“Yes,” Costellan confirmed, but his voice was hesitant, as if there was still much more unsaid.

Jene focused her eyes again on the present, to the man floating before her above his deathbed. “And so did you, Eduard.”

“Yes. We all knew.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Costellan’s voice rose in pitch. “Tell whom? The public? We told the leader of the Ship government. What he did with the knowledge cannot be laid at our feet.”

“But you knew he was keeping the secret. You could have broadcast to all of Ship and stopped the war!”

“It is not for us to meddle. We turn our eyes outward.”

“You….” Jene stopped, unable to find words to express her frustration. Here the truth had been known: had she known what Arnson had known then, she would have—

Jene frowned. “You say Arnson knew of Tann’s intentions?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t he stop the fighting? Why did he continue to plead his case for prioritizing medical services and materials?”

Costellan did not answer immediately. Jene grabbed one of the bedposts and maneuvered herself closer to him. “Why?”

“Arnson tried to strike a deal with Tann,” Costellan said slowly. “Tann agreed to abandon his plan for infection if Arnson agreed to wipe out all…undesirables from Ship before it started sending colonists down.”

Jene whispered, “Genocide?”

“That was the final solution.”

“And what for Arnson in return?”

Costellan sighed. “Power, of course. A seat in the Assembly, prestige among the argies.”

“Tann wouldn’t have kept his side of the bargain,” Jene mused. “He just wanted Arnson’s cooperation in ridding Ship of the Class D’s. But how could he have expected to accomplish that in just a few months?”

“Arnson asked Flight Crew to help.”

“Help?”

“He asked us—ordered us—to engage the light-pressure sails earlier than necessary for added braking as we approached Epsilon Eridani. He wanted us to also alter course through the Oort cloud in the system.”

“The Oort cloud?”

“A ring of cometary debris and assorted particles some distance away from a star.”

“Why through the cloud?”

“He never told us. However, such a course correction would have drastically increased the chance of striking debris. We would have experienced a hull breach similar to the one we had back in S.Y. 55.”

“He wanted to cause a hull breach?”

“In our opinion, yes.”

“To try to increase the crisis, I suppose.” Jene looked away. “To place a demand on the medical staff that they could not possibly meet and thus abandon then and there the Class D’s. He wanted to force the decision. He was ready to kill hundreds.” Jene’s head snapped back to Costellan. “But you didn’t do it.”

“No. We refused. Our charge was to take Ship safely to the third planet of the Epsilon Eridani system, and we would not obey any order that placed the mission in jeopardy.”

“So he tried to take it public before he was ready.”

“And you were there to meet him. So you see, we did not need to interfere.”

Jene shuddered. “But the conflict! The war—all those deaths. They didn’t need to happen.”

“Yes, they did, Jene. You saved more people than you could possibly have known. Arnson would have cooperated with Tann to exterminate hundreds, even thousands of
Odyssey
colonists in orbit or even on the planet. Under his leadership, the colonists would have willingly, but unknowingly, walked into death. Arnson would have been the shepherd leading his flock to the slaughterhouse. Tann’s slaughterhouse. But for you.”

Redemption did not come easily to Jene. She fought it off as desperately as she had sought it for twenty years lest it prove false. “If we had known, no one would have died.”

“Those who died had to. They were all willing combatants.”

“You could have told us. Told me.”

Costellan’s voice showed signs of life. “What would have happened if we had told you all that was planned? How long do you suppose the Flight Crew could have remained inviolate? The colony would have stormed the Control Deck at precisely the time we needed to be left alone. The delicate calculations and procedures involved in braking Ship and approaching our destination were almost more than we could handle as it was. And assuming somehow that shipmates did not molest us, do you suppose that Arnson would have left us alone if we betrayed him? Any disturbance to our operations during the last six months could have been disastrous. The civil unrest alone was quite distracting. I am proud of my Flight Crew for focusing on their tasks and guiding Ship to its destination.”

Bitterness came easily to Jene. After years of self-hatred, she was used to the taste. “I’m glad you’re proud of them. But you and your Flight Crew were worse than Arnson and his council.”

To Jene’s mild surprise, Costellan did not object to this characterization. He merely sank into himself and seemed to withdraw. Jene felt a tiny twinge of regret for her words, but pressed on nonetheless. “Arnson, at least, was doing what he believed in. In his mind, he was doing nothing wrong or evil. But you believed he was wrong and did nothing to stop him. Nothing! You let innocent people die.” Jene fought off tears at the sudden thought of Renold.

“I did not call you here, Jene. I thought you might feel this way. I am still human enough to want…to need…your forgiveness. But I can’t ask you to forgive. All that I have told you is rationalization. Looking back, now, I wish I had spoken.”

Costellan drew in a deep shuddering breath, and Jene knew he was close to death. The tiny pang of regret she had experienced earlier returned and started to gnaw at her.

“There was a writer on old Earth named Dante. He wrote something called
The Inferno
. In it, he claimed that the hottest places in Hell were reserved for those who, in time of crisis, did nothing. I will die soon, perhaps even today. I hope he was wrong.”

Costellan sighed again. Jene could not look at him, ashamed at her own feelings. She could not forgive him, and she did not like herself for that.

Costellan spoke again. “You should leave me soon. But before you do, you must take one thing from our meeting. The revolution you sparked was necessary—you must believe that. I know what it cost you: your husband and now your granddaughter. But think of the magnitude of evil you thwarted. Arnson and Tann were planning mass murder. You stopped that. You must release yourself from guilt.”

Jene stared at him but did not see him. She was looking through her memory. There was no sharp twist in her point of view on the past, but she felt within her the beginning of a change. She felt the pain of twenty years fading. She knew it would never vanish: Renold would still be dead, and Yallia would still be in exile. But Jene knew that eventually she would be able to live with her past.

Jene reached for Costellan’s hand, but the old man moved away slightly and accessed a control panel on the wall behind him. He depressed a button and without warning, a section of wall slid away and the room was flooded with light. Jene squinted into the glare and recognized, after a moment, New Earth hanging in space above them.

“One of the perks of being the patriarch of my little kingdom. A view like no other, Doctor.”

Jene and Costellan looked out at New Earth for a long moment before Jene murmured, “What’s going to happen to us?” When Costellan didn’t answer, Jene turned to him. He was floating as he had been, but his eyes were closed and his arms were hanging awkwardly away from his body.

Weeks later, a package from Ship would arrive for her on New Earth. It would be an old-style journal that was beginning to yellow slightly despite its nearly acid-free paper containing hundreds of short poems written by Costellan. The poems in the leather-bound journal would be written in an ancient form from Old Earth called haiku. Jene would spend days reading them and would soon understand Costellan: he was an observer. Like a haiku poet, he strove to remove himself entirely from what he was observing. To meddle, to inject oneself into a process or a setting was anathema to haiku poetry and to Costellan’s life. Jene would come to understand the man from his poems.

But that was all still to come. Now, as she saw him floating there, eyes closed and unresponsive, she found it within herself to forgive him for his inaction. It was as if she was borrowing knowledge from the future.

“I forgive you, Eduard.” She said to the floating body.

Sometimes, the universe conspires to smile upon the humble creatures crawling within it. Costellan smiled and nodded. His lips moved, but no sound came out; still, she knew he thanked her.

He died, taking Jene’s pain with him.

Book Three

Planet

Yallia looked up to the sound of children calling her name. She brushed a wisp of still-brown hair that had escaped from beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat and squinted through the green haze. She was almost in the center of the acre-wide potato field but could still see the cart near her farmhouse. Ten or twelve adults stood in and around the cart, lifting children out of the hay-lined bed and placing them on the ground. Almost like wind-up toys, the children scampered off towards Yallia as soon as the adults let go of them, and soon there were dozens of little bodies moving awkwardly in her direction.

Yallia could not help but smile at the welcome intrusion. She had not seen this part of her family for many weeks. No doubt they had heard the news and were coming to cheer her.

The little boys and girls stumbled over roots and fell into the soft dirt, laughed, brushed themselves off, caromed off each other on the uneven ground, and bit by bit made their unsteady way to their grandonlymother. The children were all almost the same age; three years old.

Twenty-six children in all, Yallia knew. She could recite each of their names and relationships to her, despite the similarity of appearance and manner. Sirra was the first to reach her, truedaughter of Emme, who was Yallia’s truedaughter. Sirra was almost always first in whatever she did.

“Grandonly!” Sirra said, launching herself bodily at Yallia and knocking the older woman to the ground. Yallia fell, laughing, her arms around the little girl to protect her from the impact.

“Ooof!” Yallia grunted. “My, you are getting big! Hey!” she said as the other children closed in. Yallia was soon buried under a loving pile of arms and legs.

“Children! Get off your Grandonly!” Yallia faintly heard Emme shouting. Slowly, the pressure on her chest lifted and daylight returned. Yallia got up from the ground with a momentary headache that quickly subsided. She smiled at the gaggle of children. “Well, there are a lot of children here!” She put her hands on her hips in an affected manner. “I wonder if any of them would like to have some salgar cookies?

There was an immediate and predictable response. They raced back towards the adults, who were picking their way through the potato field with dignity befitting their fifteen years, and shouted at their respective parents, “Grandonly said we can have salgar cookies!”

Sirra did not leave her grandonly, however. She was the same age as her siblings, but Emme and Yallia had both noticed the girl possessed an unusual empathy. It was why Emme had petitioned the Genetic Council for a full genome exam a few days ago.

Sirra looked at Yallia and said, “I’m sorry that your grandonly is dead.”

Yallia smiled back and kissed her. “Thank you, Sirra. But she wasn’t my grandonly—she was my grandmother.”

“Oh. I’m still sad for you.”

“That’s okay, dear.”

“How old was she?”

“She was very old. She was fifty-seven.”

Sirra considered this. “Is that old?”

“Sort of.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Oh.” Sirra thought for a moment, and Yallia knew what must be going through the young girl’s mind.

Yallia leaned in close to her. “Don’t worry, Sirra. I’m not going to die.”

“Ever?”

Yallia laughed. “Not for a very, very long time. Long enough to see your children and their children and their children!”

Sirra brightened. “And you’ll make cookies for them, too?”

“Of course. Speaking of cookies,” Yallia rose and patted Sirra on the rump, “you had better get moving, kiddo. There might not be any left!”

Sirra smiled knowingly and started off at a moderate pace towards the farmhouse. Yallia watched her go, and as her eyes followed the girl’s progress, they met those of Sirra’s onlymother.

Emma did not look like her onlymother. Of course, if a holo of a fifteen-year old Yallia were to be superimposed on a similar one of Emme, the two would appear identical, but in the moment-to-moment fluidity of expression all faces undergo, Yallia and Emme were quite different. Emme did not have the same hardness, the same outward-looking, searching expression on her face that Yallia did. Emme could only partially explain her onlymother’s demeanor by her status as an Original. Not all Originals had the same questing look about them, but it was a common enough trait.