Back to Front or Front to Back?

Well, I’m done.  The whole novel is posted, complete for your reading pleasure.  There’s just one thing ….

Blogs being blogs, they push the first entry down, piling subsequent posts on top of the ones that came before, until the beginning is lost in the archives.  Which is all well and good, except if you’re trying to read a book.  So unless you’re into reading books backwards, your may want to look up top for “The Book In Order.”  See it?  Yeah, right there on the menu bar.  As you’ll notice from the drop-down menu, you can read the book (how else?) in order—you know, as in from beginning to end?  Now isn’t that handy?

Unless, of course, you WANT to read the story backwards ….

Epilogue

From the Personal Journal of Kai-Lee Symon

Five years.  Has it really been that long since we escaped from the Janus?

At times, I still can’t believe we got away with it.  Marisol’s last-minute, armed-and-dangerous appearance was the final ironic twist in a story knotted with them.  She and I laugh about it now, but I remember all too clearly the numb despair we felt when we realized she had gotten the drop on us.  I thought we were done for right up to the second she pulled her left hand out of her jacket pocket and extended it, palm up, revealing the metallic vial containing her DNA.  Hefting the weapon with her other hand, she invited us to choose:  “Either I’m going with you, or you’re not going,” she said.

It was the one and only time I’ve ever seen Rune Gaspar completely flummoxed.  Of course, his stunned expression only lasted a second or two before he recovered his unflappable, focused demeanor and tersely ordered her to, “Sit down and strap in,” and wheeled to follow Gregor and Etsuo into the cockpit.

Once we got through takeoff—which was nowhere near as rough as I feared, but not nearly as smooth as I would have liked—and were free to move around the cabin, we converged on her en masse, demanding to know when and how she had changed her mind about the Colonial program and how she had discovered our plan.  Unbeknownst to all of us, Marisol had come around to the truth even before Enid asked her to spy on Rune.

“I was a team player right up to the assembly,” she explained.  “But when Garan asked Lawler to address Ke-Ling’s claim that we never had been and would never be the same as our Primes, she gave a non-answer, in my opinion.  You can’t just blow a claim like that off with, ‘Oh, we’re confident there are no differences,’ and leave it at that.  Your confidence means nothing to me, if you don’t have hard evidence to back it up.  I figured if she had that kind of evidence, she would have trotted it out and laid the whole thing to rest.  When she didn’t do that, I suspected there might be something to what Ke-Ling had said, after all.  My attitude adjustment sort of took off from there.

“I decided to keep it to myself until I decided what to do about it.  The undercover assignment of a lifetime,” she said, grinning wryly. “I’m pretty good at that kind of stuff, but I have to admit it was a relief when Huw asked me to watch the Chief.  I figured she wouldn’t have asked unless she considered me above suspicion.  That surveillance job was both my ace in the hole and my safety net; it gave me a legitimate reason to poke my nose into the inner circle and keep tabs on their doings.  It would also provide the early warning and the brief window of opportunity I would need if it looked like someone was onto me.”

On the night of Garan’s disappearance, Marisol—who apparently conducts an extremely efficient search—had covered her assigned area much more quickly Rune anticipated.  Once done, she started hunting down her boss to report in and get additional instructions.  As fate would have it, she stepped out of the Deck Four-B lift and entered the corridor just in time to see Rune slip out the Gen-Lab and down the hallway toward the aft lift.  Since his movements had more of cat burglary than search in them, she immediately wondered what he had been up to.

Stealing quickly and silently into the lab, she pulled up short when she spied the open vault.  (Rune later admitted he decided on the spot not to reset the alarm or close the vault.  “With a little luck, they wouldn’t discover the breach for hours.  By then all their precious DNA would be so much useless submicroscopic goo,” he grinned wickedly.  “Sure, I knew they would replace it with new deposits, but I wanted to make a statement.”)  Entering the vault, Marisol went with her instincts and did a quick check for Gaspar’s DNA.  It was gone.  Since he had all but gift-wrapped the opportunity for her, she snatched the vial marked “Cruz” and hurried after him.  Her boss obviously had a plan, and knowing him like she did, she was one hundred percent sure ending it all wasn’t on the agenda.  When she mentally replayed everything that had happened so far that night—the abandon-ship drill, followed by Garan’s disappearance and Rune’s DNA theft—all the mental tumblers clicked into place.  Abandoning her tail on Gaspar, she raced down to the flight deck and again went with her gut:  Her chief would opt for the life craft with the cleanest line of egress.

To this day, Rune scowls when she smugly reminds him how she managed to get the jump on him simply by hiding in the passenger-cabin restroom.  She had banked on the fact that he would be in too big a hurry to check it.

Once we were safely underway, Rune deprogrammed the biometric locks on the cabin portals, so we could move in.  Eran and I picked quarters amidships—creamy beige bulkheads; Berber carpeting flecked in subdued greens, gold, and browns; a king-sized bed we could slide halfway into the bulkhead with one touch of an icon, transforming bed into sofa.  Lu painted the portrait she had promised us; we hung it over our bed.  As it turned out, the cabin originally assigned to Ke-Ling was two portals down from ours.  A horse statue identical to the one we had seen in his quarters on the Janus seemed like his personal gift to us—Eran and I took it back to our place, setting it alone atop a high, rectangular glass-topped table framed in brass.  We finished our home with four wide, square, gold-and-brown-striped floor cushions; a compact mahogany desk with slim, elegant lines and delicate brass inlays at the corners; and two fan-backed rattan chairs with seat cushions mottled in abstract whorls of brown and gold edged in burgundy.

At first, everyone felt guilty about taking other people’s things—everyone but Rune, of course.  He didn’t have any qualms about availing himself of “the spoils of war,” as he called them.  The rest of us got over the guilt, too, eventually.  What else could we do?  Life had to go on.  Maybe the people we had left behind on the Janus would eventually go into my cabin and help themselves, too.  I sure hoped so.

Speaking of people and things left behind, we did our best to make sure our DNA wasn’t among them.  Eran and Rune scheduled the abandon-ship drill on cleaning day, meaning our quarters had been newly vacuumed and dusted by the android cleaning crews.  Not quite as effective as the decontamination Ke-Ling had done, but trying to pull the same stunt would have set off alarms from Deck One-B to Six-A.  Once our quarters were shipshape, we sprayed everything—clothes, furniture, carpeting, personal care items, you name it—with a solution Alis gave us, then cranked up the heat in our quarters when we left.  The good doctor promised us the combination of heat and chemicals would effectively destroy any genetic material left behind.

Five years later, life is still unfolding and still full of surprises—although these days, most of the surprises are pleasant ones.  A year or so after we left the Janus, I realized the Alpha memories implanted in me shortly after birth seemed to be fading.  Or maybe not so much fading, as popping up less and less often.  I asked Alis about it one night as I was making dinner in the galley.  (We take turns cooking, something even Lu has learned to enjoy doing.)

Our doctor was leaning against the table, watching me cut up vegetables for soup.  Her eyes narrowed as she thought about my question.  “I hadn’t noticed, but you’re right, now that I think about it.”

“So what’s going on?”

Looking pensive, she nibbled her lower lip.  “I’m not an expert,” she finally began, “but I would guess our neurochemistry has changed dramatically.  Since the chips were set to respond to prescribed chemical processes in our brains ….”

“… and since our brains no longer operate according prescribed guidelines,” I added.

She nodded.  “It’s possible the ICEs aren’t being triggered as often.”  Neither of us knew for sure if she was right, but the possibility alone made everyone’s day.

As for other surprises ….

Monogamy has broken out big-time on The Awakening.  (That’s what we named our ship, by the way.)  Lexi and Jordi are still together, of course.  Marisol and Isidor became an item a few months after our escape, Na’weh and Rune—two people I would have chosen Most Likely to Be Loners—a few months after that.  Lu fell head over heels for Gregor—an interesting couple, to say the least!  He’s logical, cautious, and concise, and she … isn’t.  Alis and Ziv turned out to be the real deal after all, with no matchmaking help from me.  But I would have to say Liriene and Etsuo win the award for cutest and most unlikely couple.  You should see them together.  I swear, one flutter of those thick, black lashes, one tiny Gallic moue, and that taciturn man melts into a fawning love-struck puddle.  Of course, the feeling is mutual; Liriene pampers him shamelessly.

If I had to choose the biggest surprise to date, it would have to be the fact that Eran and I are expecting a child—about two months from now, according to Alis.  When he and I first talked about it, we reckoned we should wait to start a family until we got to the planet, which we call New Hope.  (Now that we can see our new world from a better angle, we’re sure it’s habitable.)  Anyway, Eran and I thought we should wait, until Rune pointedly reminded us we’ll be another fifty years or so getting home.  Eighty-five isn’t old, but still.  Besides, like Rune says, we don’t know if we’ll find a civilization or have to build one, and adult children will be a big help, if it comes to the latter.  So we’re starting our families now.  Since we got pregnant first, Eran and I are a kind of test case.

Honesty compels me to admit I almost wimped out before we even got started, and all because Alis refused to deactivate my contraceptive implant until she was sure Eran and I understood what having babies “the old fashioned” way involved.  She made us watch this video—I’ve got to tell you, it wasn’t pretty.  Who knew having a baby was such a sweaty, gritty, gory, painful proposition?  Even Alis looked slightly green around the gills.

Eran  recovered first.  It couldn’t be as bad as it looked, he said, because back in the day, most women had more than one child.  Furthermore, medicine had come a long way since that video was made.  I had to admit those were two perfectly logical arguments, but as far as I was concerned the deciding factor wasn’t logic but the mysterious maternal urge that seemed to spring up out of nowhere.  Now, when I feel our child move inside me, when I think about how little bits of Eran combined with little bits of me to make someone brand new … I’m one hundred percent sure we made the right decision.  Whenever Alis does an obstetrical scan and gives us a peek at our daughter, life seems nothing short of miraculous, which only goes to prove Ke-Ling was right when he said life was an ineffable mystery that should be held in reverence and awe.  The sheer, unadulterated, beautiful wonder of life hits me hardest when I lay my hand on my unbelievably big belly and recall the journey that brought us to this point.

We still talk about that journey, still ask ourselves questions like, “How did this happen?” and, “Why us?” and, “Can all the amazing, serendipitous turns our lives have taken be written off as random chance?” Is there something or someone … greater … out there?  A higher intelligence?  A cosmological force?  Was Eran right on the money when he described our awakening as a “call to join in again?”  Late at night, when our defenses our down, most of us confess we feel that way—although we tend to append a lot of long, drawn-out, appropriately sophisticated disclaimers to the admission.  Still, it’s an intriguing idea.

Will we find our answers out here?  Or down there on our new world?  I have a feeling we’ll we find at least some of them in our children’s eyes.  All I know is, we’ll be looking.  But if you ask me, life isn’t about having all the answers.  I think life is about the questions—admitting they’re there and will always be there, facing them and carrying on, even when you’re not likely to get answers any time soon.

Life is a journey of discovery, a quest to learn about ourselves, the people we meet, and the cosmos around us.  Like I told Eran, we’ll make mistakes along the way; no one gets it right all the time.  But my guess is, getting it right isn’t what matters most.  What matters most is living our unique moments of history the best we can, doing our part to move civilization forward on humanity’s clumsy, risky, and occasionally glorious search for meaning and truth.  What matters most is that we all keep searching, no matter what.

Otherwise, why live?

Ω

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-seven

I almost jumped out of my skin when the portal opened.

Looking more shadow than man, Rune jerked his head toward the forward cabin. “Go on, get buckled in.  And move it!”  He spun to his left and strode down the corridor toward Liriene’s quarters, leaving the five of us to scurry off in the opposite direction.

A million questions raced through my mind as I trotted through the darkened ship right behind Lu, Eran’s hand on my back urging me to hurry.  Had the Gaspar diversion worked?  Did Rune manage to dispose of our DNA?  What about the computer thing … was that taken care of?  The planet!  What did we really know about the planet?  Would this ship even fly that far after more than four hundred years in mothballs?  Were we all going to die?  What in Hades did we think we were doing?

Somehow, I wound up strapped into a seat between Lu and Eran, staring at Etsuo and Gregor, who stood near the cockpit door, probably waiting for Rune.  Then suddenly, he was there, herding Lexi, Jordi, Isidor, Na’weh, and Liriene into the five seats across from us.  I breathed a momentary sigh of relief.  At least we had all made it this far.

“Okay, listen up,” Rune growled quietly.  He was totally focused, all business.  I had never seen him so completely alive, so obviously in his element.  “We don’t have time to run through the usual preflight equipment checks.  Let’s hope this baby powers up the way she’s supposed to, because they’re going to find Garan any minute now, and when they do, they’ll come looking for me.  When they hear this craft power up, they’ll all come running.

“Your surplus DNA is history.  The planet’s coordinates are locked in, and the network connection to the Janus has been disabled.  We’re buttoned up and ready to go.”  He took two steps toward the cockpit, then stopped and turned.  “Oh.  One more thing.  I didn’t mention it before, because I didn’t want anybody more nervous than they had to be.  It involves takeoff.  Since we’ve never flown one of these babies before, we can’t be sure what the ride will be like.  Etsuo here knows this ship from stem to stern, and he thinks we’ll be all right.  But brace yourselves, because liftoff could be rocky.”  The fact that his warning didn’t provoke complete hysteria was all the proof I needed:  I had crossed the numbness threshold.   Rune scanned our faces, his gaze steady and reassuring.  “All set?” he said.

“Not quite.”

The voice came from the rear of the darkened cabin.  It was a woman’s voice.  Not just any woman’s voice; it was Marisol Cruz’s voice.  I recognized it as the death of hope even before I saw Rune brace for battle, before Cruz came to stand in the aisle next to our seats, before my horrified eyes locked onto the Inducer clasped with nauseating familiarity in her all-too-capable right hand.

Ω

Check back next week for the FINAL chapter!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-six

Time passes very slowly in closets.  At least, that was how it seemed to me.  Rune had given each of us a state-of-the-art chronometer—a flat, razor-thin wraparound that could easily pass for a fashion accessory-type wristband.   All fourteen devices had been programmed with voice recognition software and synchronized to keep everyone on schedule.

“Why can’t we use our communicators to coordinate our movements?” Lu had asked.

Rune gave her one of his you’re kidding, right? looks.  “Because the signal can be traced.  Not that anyone will bother, but I’m not taking chances at this stage of the game.  Turn it off until I tell you otherwise and take damned the chronometer.”  Which was all well and good, but every time I shoved up my sleeve and verbally activated the flexible display, hardly any time had lapsed.

My mouth got drier and drier as the minutes crawled by—a byproduct of prolonged suspense, no doubt.  Before long, my lips were sticking to my teeth, and a sly voice in my head was whispering about the cool drink as near as the small bath located to the right of the closet.  But fear and common sense wouldn’t let me risk the exposure.  Fear, because it would be just my luck to sprint out of the closet and into the arms of an overly conscientious crewman who had decided to make sure everyone had deplaned after all—an admittedly unlikely scenario, but not impossible.  But the common-sense argument for resisting temptation was the real clincher.  Two hours hiding out in the small closet would rapidly degenerate from mildly uncomfortable to absolutely miserable if I added a full bladder to the mix.  Fortunately, I had impulsively stuffed a handful of hard candies into the deep right-hand pocket of my indigo tunic as I left for the drill.  They weren’t much, but they were better than nothing.

Nestled in the gap I had made by shoving clothes to either side—a gap that could and would disappear in a heartbeat if I heard a noise outside my hidey hole—I leaned back against the bulkhead and contemplated the series of sharp, unexpected turns my life had taken in the past six months.  Maybe my perspective was skewed by the fact that I was hiding in my own closet, but the journey seemed surreal to me now.  Ella Fitzgerald as the kickoff for a rebel launch into the vast unknown?  How did that happen?

There was no getting around the fact that I was about to jettison the only home I had ever known.  I would never again see Tarrazu, the Bistro, Liriene’s library, or the stern-visaged Greek warrior gazing out from the portrait in my bedroom.  I would never stand in front of the ornately scrolled mirror where I had stared at my reflection as I tried to get a handle on the awakening that would eventually sweep me up in its path, depositing me where I sat.  Harder still, I would be leaving without so much as a good-bye-and-good-luck to individuals I had lived with all my life.  When Maya’s gently rounded face swam in front of my mind’s eye, I experienced a child-like pang, almost as if I were remembering a long-lost parent—which, in a way, I guessed I was.  She had called on me a few times since the fateful visit that inspired my research into the Protocols but thankfully, I had been out.

I said mental farewells to Damia, Javan, Publius … even Cecyl Fachtna.  The deep, sad yearning I felt on their behalf pressed tears into my eyes.  Please don’t let them take your lives, I pleaded silently.  Maybe they would wake up one day.  Maybe they would all wake up.  I took some comfort in the fact that I had made my own small contribution to the cause.  After making a copy to take with me, I had Rune decrypt my journal and set up a ship-wide transmission similar to Ke-Ling’s, except mine would drop the diary into each person’s electronic mailbox and have a happier ending.  Providing the planet was habitable and the ship made it that far, of course.

I wondered if the life force that had been Ke-Ling was out there somewhere, rooting for us.  I didn’t know; I did know I would miss him for the rest of my life.  I pictured his last, sad smile and wished with all my aching heart he were hiding in his closet, waiting join us in our perilous bid for freedom.

Check the chronometer. I started, thinking it was almost as if someone had whispered it in my ear.  How long had I been daydreaming?  I shoved up my sleeve, rapidly blinked the tears out of my eyes, and activated the display.  My heart jigged nervously.  Almost time.

With five minutes to go, I turned sideways, extending my legs.  Moving carefully and quietly, I flexed my feet, bent my knees, straightened my legs again, and gently rubbed and kneaded my thighs and calves.  I repeated the process several times, pausing only to check the glowing green countdown.  When the readout reached less than a minute, I stood, relieved to note Rune had been right—no cramps or stiffness.  The second the display dropped to zero, I flipped open the small access panel embedded at eye level in the bulkhead, and hit the override switch.  The wall slid back like magic.  I exhaled in relief and whispered, “Thank you,” to the unknown engineer who had possessed enough imagination to provide for the improbable—i.e., a situation where some poor soul might need to get out of a closet.

Tiptoeing probably wasn’t necessary, but it seemed like the thing to do.  I made my way across the salon, pausing for a second to lean against the bulkhead.  Sucking in a deep breath for courage, I straightened and opened the portal.  The only light came from the soft blue glow of the emergency deck strips lining the corridor.  I hovered anxiously in place, reaching out with all my senses, tensing at the sound of a softly approaching tread, ready to duck back inside.

Eran’s tall, lean form materialized out of the semi-darkness.  He spoke in a bare whisper.  “Are you ready?”

“More than,” I whispered back.  He took my hand, and together we moved silently up the corridor.

“This is the fiddly bit,” he breathed, his hand on the hatch control panel.  “Let’s hope Rune’s diversion has accomplished all its intended objectives.  The last thing we need is to open this hatch and find some mechanic gaping up at us.”  All I could do was nod and hold my breath while he touched the screen.  To my panicky ears, the opening of the hatch raised an almighty racket; in reality, it wasn’t much more than a deep mechanical hum, followed by a quiet hiss.  Eran poked his head out for a look around, then pulled it back in to give me a quick, reassuring nod.  “The coast is clear,” he murmured.

We knew the gangway would be in place, because the gangways were always in place.  In the event of an actual emergency, too much precious evacuation time would be wasted moving them into position.  Rune had assured us illumination would be minimal; the hangar bay was only floodlit during drills or when the crews were performing maintenance.  Both factors made it easy for Eran and me to slip down the gangway, ghost through the shadows, and work our way around the ship.

Eran paused again, checking to make sure no one else was around, friend or foe.  If anyone in our group had gotten a delayed start or jumped off early, we would huddle against our life craft until the coast was clear.  But the cavernous bay remained cool, empty, and silent, so we dashed across the tarmac and into the deep shadows next to the towering gangway leading up to the escape ship, flattening ourselves against its base.  After another minute of watching and listening, we darted up the ramp, through the hatch, and into the darkened interior.

No one met us, not one head popped out of a portal in greeting, but we hadn’t expected anything like that.  Rune’s orders were to get under cover and stay there until he showed up.  Eran and I moved swiftly down the corridor, counting as we went.  We stopped at the eleventh cabin, and Eran tapped softly on the portal.  The moment it opened, we ducked inside.  Lu, Alis, and Ziv smiled shakily in apparent relief.

“Who’s left?” Eran murmured once the portal had closed.

“Etsuo, Gregor, and Rune, I think,” Lu answered softly.  “Lexi, Jordi, Isidor, and Na’weh should already be with Liriene at her place.  At least, I hope they are.”  Right then, there was no way to know.

Eran shoved up his sleeve and peered at his chronometer.  Rune had given him a dual-readout model reflecting both our boarding countdown and the countdown to Rune’s arrival.  “Rune should be in the Gen-Lab now.  If all’s going as planned, I put him twenty minutes into the operation.  Etsuo should be here in ten minutes, Gregor fifteen minutes after that.”

“So forty minutes,” Ziv said.  Eran nodded, and we settled down to wait.

Ω

Chapter 47 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-five

“Keep moving!  Keep moving, people!”  Bill Stallings stood, legs braced apart, hands on hips, his expression a mix of boredom and professional frustration.  The look said it all.  These exercises were a pain, but they were necessary.  They were also timed, and Stallings was responsible for getting this particular group on that particular life craft as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately for Bill, his charges weren’t cooperating.  As usual, they strolled up the gangway in random, unruly gaggles.  Some complained, some laughed and made sarcastic remarks—the kind of comments people make when they think the bureaucrats in charge have nothing better to do than hassle John Q. Public.  Security and safety personnel were the only ones inclined to take these drills seriously, and tonight even they seemed bored.

I, on the other hand, was terrified.  My legs were weak, my hands were cold, my mouth so dry I couldn’t have licked my lips even if I had wanted to—which I didn’t, because that would be a sign of extreme nervousness, right?  I kept moving toward the gangway, reminding myself to breathe normally so I wouldn’t hyperventilate before I got to the ship.  As Eran and I neared Stallings, I swallowed with a dry click I was sure the man would hear.  So far, I had managed—at least, I hoped I had—to keep the pulse-pounding panic off my face.  I was aiming for the same expression of resigned, bored impatience I saw on everyone else.  But could I pull it off?  What if Bill noticed the deep, hard throb of my carotid artery?  He had been trained to pick up on stuff like that, right?  By the Sage, I was not cut out for this!

As I drew even with the security man, I forced myself to meet his gaze and give him a small, wry smile.  “Are we having fun yet?”

He smirked a bit, but kept it official by adding a simple directive to, “Keep moving, please.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice.

“Nicely done,” Eran muttered under his breath, once we were well past Stallings.  “I didn’t know you had it in you, Red.”

“Me either,” I murmured, and managed to draw my first real breath since the klaxon had sounded.

We shuffled toward the life craft in what seemed like maddening slow motion.  What was the hold up, anyway?  I fought the urge to crane my neck in an effort to find out … or search out familiar faces among the lines snaking toward the neighboring ships, ahead and to our left.  I couldn’t see the two life craft themselves, because my view of that part of the tarmac was blocked by our ship.  I knew Rune was watching the drill from up in the control room but didn’t so much as glance in that direction.  All I could do now was keep moving, try to remain inconspicuous, and hope all our friends would do the same.

Suddenly, my feet were on the gangway, and we began the steep climb toward the yawning aft hatch.  My legs threatened to give out on me, but I steadied myself with the handrails as, Not much farther, almost there, not much farther, almost there, cycled through my head like a mantra.  I concentrated on keeping my respiration even and my movements relaxed.  There was nothing I could do about my skyrocketing heart rate.

We stepped through the hatch and turned left, slowly progressing through the residential section to the forward cabin, inching our way between the rows of seats, five on each side of the aisle.  There it was, row seventeen.  My assigned row.  I edged in sideways and took my seat next to the bulkhead, while Eran continued up the aisle to row twelve.  I buckled the seatbelt, heaving a silent sigh of relief when I managed to do it without my hands shaking or fingers fumbling.

Elspeth Jaeger huffed blond bangs out of her blue eyes as she plopped down into the seat to my left.  “These things are a waste of time,” she complained, glowering at the seat back in front of her.

I settled for a noncommittal, “Mm.”

“And of all the times to hold one—eleven o’clock at night!  I was on my way to a mix.”  The hairdresser adjusted a thick gold bangle cuffing her right wrist.  “Oh, well,” she sighed, “what’s an hour, more or less?”  She turned to greet the tall, slender man who sank gracefully into the seat to her left.  “Dante!  You look fantastic … as usual.  Are you going to Damia’s mix, too?”

Turned out he was, so the two dived into some lively gossip about the other people expected to attend, mercifully cutting me out of the conversational loop.  Wanting to make sure I stayed out, I leaned back my head and closed my eyes.  The wait for the all-clear seemed to last forever, the cabin growing warm and stuffy as Elspeth and Dante dissected their friends, and I battled a bad case of near-claustrophobic, rapidly fraying nerves.  Finally, the klaxon gave two short blasts, signaling our release.

Now came the tricky part.  I opened my eyes and raised my head but stayed put, letting the others file out before I moved to perch on the arm of the aisle seat.  With a little luck, anyone glancing my way would assume I was patiently waiting for the crush to peter out.

I swear, it felt like an hour before the last person passed me and Eran appeared in the aisle.  His eyes met mine briefly as he gestured for me to go ahead of him so he was the last in line.  Remembering Rune’s how-to lecture, I hung back a few paces as the line crawled back through the residential section in impatient, accordion-style fits and starts.  Eran’s quarters were nearer the passenger cabin than mine, so he dropped off first.  I didn’t hear the portal open and close, but I sensed his absence immediately, leaving me chilled, alone, and bereft.  I continued toward my own quarters, barely resisting the urge to sprint for safety.  Fifteen cabins between me and my sanctuary.  Progress was agonizingly slow, but the portal finally closed behind me.  Darting across the compact salon-slash-bedroom, I dove into the closet.

Ω

Chapter 46 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-four

I was afraid.

Get a grip, I ordered myself.  Rune, Eran, Etsuo, and Gregor know what they’re doing; if they think we can get away with this, we can. It was meant to be a bracing reminder.  Unfortunately, it didn’t help much.  I lay in bed, my eyes trying to pierce the darkness that seemed to be closing in with faint, cold menace.  Where will I be twenty-four hours from now? I wondered with a tight swallow.

Well, worse case, we would be caught before we could escape and handed over to the tender mercies of Enid Huw.  Okay, that didn’t bear thinking about.  Best case?  Our plan would go off without a hitch.  Oddly enough, that didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.  Call me a coward, but the prospect of hurtling through space in a pint-sized ship that hadn’t flown for more than four hundred years was less than thrilling.  The fact that our course would be set for an unknown planet we may or may not be able to land on, let alone inhabit, was likewise not calculated to ease my mind.

Giving in to the well-known misery-loves-company impulse, I rolled onto my left side.  “Eran?”  I whispered.  “Are you awake?”

“Mm.”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Except for the tension is rolling off you in waves,” he murmured, “I never would have guessed.”  The sheets rustled as he turned to face me.  “What’s wrong, Kai?”

“I’m scared.”  It came out small and pitiful, prompting a mortified wince.

He caressed my shoulder before brushing his fingers gently down my arm to clasp my hand.  He lifted it, pressed it to his lips.  “No shame in that,” he said.  “We’re all scared.”

“You, too?”

“Me, too.  I’d be a fool not to be.  Whether we’re stopped or whether we escape cleanly … either way, the danger is very real.”

“It’s a good plan,” I whispered hopefully.

“Yes, it is.”

“Do you think it will work?”

“Red, if I didn’t think it would work, I would have no part of it.  I’m not about to risk your life, or mine, on an ill-considered, hopeless gamble.  We would find another way.”

I snuggled closer, my anxiety easing slightly as his arm slid around my waist.  “Was holding the drill your idea?.”

“Mm.  Fortunately, the drills don’t follow a regular schedule; Rune prefers to spring them unannounced.  I couldn’t see any other way to get all thirteen of us safely on board the life craft without attracting undue attention.”

“Rune was impressed.”

“Rune would have thought of it himself before long.”

“Are you two sure no one will notice when we don’t deplane?”

“As sure as we can be.  No one’s ever checked before to make sure everyone got off.  No need to.  Why would anybody linger, when abandon-ship drills are unanimously considered nothing but a bloody, boring nuisance?  All anyone wants is to get the run-through over with as quickly as possible.  We’ll simply slip into hiding during the muddle that inevitably results when everyone throngs the exits.  Two hours after the drill, Rune will begin his charade with Gaspar.  I doubt anyone will have time to detect our absence before all hell breaks loose.”

“And when it does, those of us who aren’t assigned to Lu’s ship will sneak off our ships and onto hers, because it’s nearest the launch portal.”

I felt him nod.  “The lists designating the passengers of specific life craft have been set for centuries.  We certainly can’t change them now.  I only hope all our friends remember to make their moves cautiously, in pairs, at the specified ten-minute intervals.  We don’t want ten people making a mad dash all at once.”

“I’m sure the others will be careful.”

“All the same, I’m glad Rune plans to tinker with the video feed.  If anyone decides to zoom in on the area—not that they will so soon after the exercise—but in case they do, it’s reassuring to know they’ll see looped footage of a deserted hangar bay.”

“Mm.”  Eran’s warmth was driving away the cold; I could feel myself relaxing even more.  “Did you see Liriene’s face when she realized she would have to give up the library?  I thought she was going to cry.”  I didn’t mention the fact that I had been ready to cry with her.

“Fortunately, we’ll be traveling on her assigned life craft.”

He was referring to the fact that the quarters aboard the life craft were small, but fully furnished.  Since both Lu and Liriene were already assigned to the ship we were taking, they would have the comfort of a few personal possessions—Lu her art supplies, Liriene at least a few books.  The rest of us would have to leave everything behind and start over with whatever we could find in the unoccupied quarters.  Strangely enough, losing all my possessions didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  Eran and I would finally be able to live together openly as husband and wife; whatever belongings we chose, we would choose together.

Eran brushed his lips across my forehead.  “Feeling better now?”

“Mostly.  I guess.  Except ….”

“Except?”

“Eran, what happens if we find out this new planet isn’t habitable?”

“In that case, we’ll have a decision to make, won’t we?” he replied calmly.  “We’ll have to find someplace else to go.”

“But Gregor will already have programmed those coordinates into the computer.  Can he change them once they’re set?”

“Absolutely.  Etsuo assures me he can modify our guidance system if need be, so we can operate autonomously.  The ship would still pilot itself, but we would be able to tell it where to go.”

“And where would that be, if not this planet?” I wondered.  “Worlds fit for human habitation don’t exactly grow on trees, you know.”

His cough sounded suspiciously like a strangled laugh.  “Excuse me?”

I elbowed him in the side.  “You know what I mean.”

“Oddly enough, I do.”  The arm around my waist moved as his hand came up to lift my face to his.  He kissed me quick and chuckled, “I’m crazy about you, Red.”  Kissing me again, he pulled me close, tucking my head beneath his chin.  “As for the what-ifs … suppose we hold those for the time being?  No sense borrowing trouble.  And who knows?  Maybe you’re right.  Maybe our lives are being shaped and guided by some force, some more advanced life form with a cosmic plan.  If so, and if it’s brought us this far, what reason do we have to think it will leave us stranded?”

He no sooner asked the question when the strangest thing happened:  All my remaining tension ebbed away and a deep peace flooded me, which didn’t make a lick of sense, because nothing had changed.  Tomorrow still bristled with danger, risks, and uncertainty.  Any sane person would be worried, but all of a sudden I wasn’t.  It took all of thirty seconds for me to decide I could analyze this weird emotional sine wave some other time.  For now, I would give myself over to it and get a good night’s sleep.

“You’re right,” I told Eran, yawning widely.  “Either way, there’s no use thinking about it now.”  I settled deeper into the mattress.  “We’d better get some rest.”

“Just like that?”

“Mm-hm.”

Eran chuckled again, softly, as he pulled the covers up to my chin.  “I’m never going to completely understand you, am I?  What I can’t for the life of me figure out,” he murmured as I started to drift off, “is why I should find the fact that you constantly manage to surprise me so very delightful.  Good night and good rest, my love,” he whispered.

I felt his lips on my hair right before I fell into an impossibly deep, dreamless sleep.

Ω

Chapter 45 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-three

Three hours after Rune’s two-hour briefing I was curled up against Eran’s side, my head on his shoulder and my stocking feet tucked under the back cushions of Rune’s sofa.  I should have been exhausted, but my adrenaline output was still off the chart, my emotions seesawing between speechless awe and outright disbelief.

“I’ll say one thing,” I marveled.  “When you guys come up with a plan, it’s a doozy.  All I can say is … wow!”

Rune’s grin was on the tired side.  “Plans come easy when you can count your options on two fingers.”

“Especially if one of those two options is no option at all,” Eran put in.  “Remaining on the Janus is out of the question.”

“It’s funny,” I mused.  “It’s not like I didn’t know about the life craft, not after all those abandon-ship drills.  But actually using one to escape?”  I shook my head.  “Never entered my mind.”

“Yeah?  Well those ships popped into my head the minute I realized we weren’t going to be able to stop Ke-Ling’s broadcast,” Rune said.  “The way I saw it, odds were a hundred to one against the majority accepting the truth, even if it did slap them in the face.  I figured our ability to stay below the radar indefinitely was iffy at best.  Turns out, it was a notch or two below iffy.  I guess we could go down fighting … not the most attractive outcome, but it would be better than knuckling under.  But when it comes right down to it, the life craft are our only realistic E&E option.”

“Our what option?”

“E&E.  Escape and evasion.  Problem was, back when Eran and I first discussed it, there were some serious holes in the plan.”

“Like what?”

“Like the fact that there are only three mature, fully-trained pilots aboard the Janus at any one time,” Eran replied.  

“Lucky for us,” Rune continued, “there are four life craft—not counting the one reserved for the younglings and their nurturers—each designed to carry one hundred people.”

I pondered that for a second, then shook my head.  “I don’t get it.  How does the number of ships work in our favor?”

Eran explained.  “In order to compensate for the fact that an emergency would find us with fewer pilots than life craft, the smaller ships were programmed to more or less pilot themselves.  If the abandon-ship order was ever given, the navigator would feed the proper coordinates into each life craft via the main computer, and off we’d go.”

“So we needed either a pilot or navigator who was on our side,” I concluded.

“Just so.”

“And some good coordinates.”

“Right again.”

“Enter Gregor to save the day.”  I tilted my head.  “Okay, he’ll program the coordinates for the new planet into our ship from the main computer.  But what’s to stop Consuela Fernandez from overriding that programming and bringing us right back?”

“Did you hear that?”  Rune beamed in fraternal pride.  “We’ll make an operator out of you yet, Red.”

Lips twitching, Eran cleared his throat.  “Yes.  Well, in answer to your question, darling, maintaining control of our on-board computer is Rune’s lookout.”

Still smiling widely, Rune nodded.  “As soon as Sterling programs the coordinates, I’ll erase any record of the transmission and disable the network connection between our ship’s computers and the Janus.”

“Won’t someone in computing notice all that activity?”  When Rune’s smile collapsed, I winced.  “Forget I asked.”

“Keep in mind,” chuckled Eran, “this bit will happen within minutes of our departure.  Gregor will send the coordinates, which Etsuo will instantly lock into our ship’s guidance computer.  Immediately after that and in less time than it takes our navigator to make his way down from the control bridge to the flight deck, Rune will work his magic on the main computer.  We’ll off before the technicians can spot a trace of Rune’s sabotage, let alone counteract it.”

“I don’t leave traces,” Rune snapped.

“There you see?”  Eran flashed a bright, airy smile.  “We haven’t a thing to worry about!”

Stifling a grin, I decided to change the subject before Rune blew his top.  “So Gregor plugged the holes in your plan.”

Rune tried to hold his glare at Eran but reluctant amusement had already crept into his dark gaze.  His lips curved as he turned to look at me.  “Getting Koizumi didn’t hurt.  The ships are solid and well maintained, but a lot of things can go haywire in flight.  We might have been able to make a successful getaway without an engineer, but I like our chances a lot better now that I know we’ll have one on board.” 

“His expertise could definitely come in handy,” I conceded. 

The life craft were smaller than the Janus but no less complex.  Designed to take off from a flight deck and land on a planet’s surface, they were equipped with swept-back wings and terrain-adaptable landing gear, not to mention forward cabins packed with high-backed leather seats passengers would strap into during arrival and departure.  The ships’ size pretty much dictated their no-frills interiors—no frills as in, no club deck, no dedicated office spaces or library, and personal cabins pared down to one large room and a bath.  Galley-style communal dining.  But the essentials were there, including scaled-down versions of the food production units and hydroponic garden.  Those systems wouldn’t be brought online until after we left, but given the fact that the ship was pre-stocked with enough provisions to keep a hundred people going until production was up and running, we would have more than enough to tide us over.

Each ship also had a miniature Gen-Lab.  Of course, we wouldn’t be using ours.  The DNA in our bodies would be the only genetic material on board.  It was a short mental hop from that thinking about that to thinking about the other part of their plan:  Rune’s upcoming raid on the DNA bank.  My stomach knotted with anxiety.  I knew the deed had to be done, but couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear.

The spy in question eyed me narrowly.  “What’s on your mind, Red?”

“Your upcoming break-in,” I admitted. 

He would steal into the Gen-Lab shortly after midnight on Wednesday, giving him two scant hours to complete his mission.  First he would steal the DNA, then he would flush it out the ship’s waste disposal system—since we were leaving, we weren’t even going to try to conceal the theft—then he would sanitize the main computer and hustle down to our ship in time for departure. 

“I don’t see why you insist on going by yourself,” I fretted.  “Wouldn’t it be better to have help?  Maybe a lookout of some kind?”

“No way.  I’m trained for this, the rest of you aren’t.  The last thing I need is to be saddled with a bunch of amateurs.  Going solo, I can get in and out like that,” he snapped his fingers, “with no one the wiser.”

“What if there’s an alarm or something?”

He shot me a no-kidding look.  “Of course there’s an alarm … more like an alert, actually.  It sounds whenever the vault is opened and keeps sounding until someone closes it.  That and the flashing red light above the portal are supposed to notify staff that the vault is open, so they’ll remember to close it as quickly as possible to preserve the ambient temperature.  I should know, I designed the system myself.” 

Translation:  He could disarm the system, take the DNA, and rearm the system with one hand tied behind his back. 

I still wasn’t completely reassured.  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Like what?”

“Agent Cruz has her eye on you.”

“Oh, I’ll give Marisol something a lot more interesting to do that night … a little distraction that will keep her busy plenty long enough for us to make a clean getaway.”

“It seems the Kiril is scheduled for a mysterious disappearance,” murmured Eran, and I felt my jaw drop.

“Just a short one,” Rune drawled after I managed to close my mouth, “right after my meeting with him.  See, Cruz has got no way to watch me—no reason to, for that matter—when I’m in the secure Council Chamber with a stand-up guy like Garan.  It will be a late meeting, and the First Councilor likes his decaf, so I’ll slip a little something extra into his second or third cup.”

I was fascinated in spite of my reservations.  “Then what?”

“Well, when we wind things up an hour or so later, he’ll probably start to feel disoriented, possibly on account of his pounding headache.  He’s been under a lot of stress, you know.  Stress like that takes its toll on a man, no telling how it might affect his health.  By the time we get into the Council Chamber’s private elevator, he should be leaning on me pretty heavily.  Naturally, as a concerned colleague, I’ll offer to escort him to his quarters.  Well, you can imagine my professional concern when I hurry back to his quarters with Doctor Hahona, and Garan is nowhere to be found.  We check a few places, we don’t locate him, I sound the alarm.  Each of my agents, including Marisol Cruz, will be assigned a specific search area.”  Rune paused to grin wolfishly.  “By the time they find him sleeping like a baby on Deck Three—the last place they’ll look—I’ll have jettisoned the DNA, and we’ll be long gone.” 

“I guess you’ve thought of everything,” I conceded.

“Tried to,” he acknowledged.  “Of course, no plan is foolproof.  The key is to keep your wits about you and adapt on the fly as needed.” 

On the fly launched another train of thought.  “Speaking of flying,” I said, “if we take one of those ships, what happens if the Quingenti do have to abandon the Janus someday?  There won’t be room for everyone on the other three life craft.  Minus the thirteen of us, that leaves eighty-seven people with no place to go.” 

Rune stared at me for a moment, then sighed heavily as he dropped his head against the back of his chair.  “Yeah,” he said, gazing at the overhead.  “I can’t tell you that hasn’t kept me awake at night.”

“We discussed this at length,” Eran said with a nod toward Gaspar, “searching for a way around it.  There simply isn’t one, Kai.  They’ll kill us if we stay—one way or another.”

Rune nodded grimly as his bleak gaze dropped to meet mine.  “They’ll have to double up, that’s all.  Remember, we didn’t set these rules of engagement, they did.  Whether they knew it or not, when they reduced this situation to a case of them or us, they made our decision for us.  There’s nothing else we can do.  We have to get out, and those ships are our only means.”

“This has to be the ultimate irony,” I decided.

“How so?” Eran asked.

“More than four hundred years ago, the Quingenti felt they had no choice but to leave Earth, because no one was prepared to let them clone themselves indefinitely.  Now we have no choice but to leave the Quingenti, because they’re not prepared to let us stop.  It’s almost like history is correcting itself.”  The idea raised goose bumps on my arms.    

“History as a sentient force?” Eran smiled.  “That’s a bit far fetched, even for you, darling.”

“Maybe not as far fetched as you think,” I insisted, slowly rubbing my arms as I put the pieces together.  “Let’s look at the evidence.”

Rune frowned.  “What evidence?”

“Well, we’ve already talked about how weird it is, all these people arriving at the same unheard-of conclusion within such a short period of time.  Then we find ourselves cornered, and the life craft are our only way out, except we can’t very well hijack one unless we have an a navigator who can program in a destination so the ship will fly itself.  Up pops Gregor, the perfect two-for-one solution—he’s a navigator, and he just discovered what could be a habitable world not far from our current position.  Then there’s Etsuo, of course—a complete bonus.”  I shook my head in awe.  “The odds against all those occurrences being nothing but serendipity must be astronomical!  The way we all came together, the fact that our every need has been met?  How about the fact that Gregor discovered a planet exactly when and where we needed one?  I know there’s such a thing as coincidence, but this is bizarre!  What’s so far fetched about admitting we may have had …”  I paused, gave a small, self-conscious shrug. “… help?”

Eran gazed at me curiously, head canted to one side.  “Help from history?”

“Not history … exactly.  But maybe there’s … an energy … or … a … a consciousness behind history; a force that keeps nudging mankind forward, showing us our mistakes, working to make it all turn out right in the end.”  I hesitated.  “Suppose,” I continued pensively, “just suppose, man isn’t the highest form of life in the universe.  We assume we are, we act like we are, but … what if we’re not?  What if there’s something … bigger?  What if it’s been communicating with us?”  I looked from Eran to Rune.  “And what if it’s on our side?”

Ω

Chapter 44 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all arights reserved

Chapter Forty-two

The stunned silence lasted maybe half a minute, then several people tried to talk at once.

Eran whistled softly.  “Bloody hell!”

“No longer exists?” sputtered Jordi.  “Our course no longer exists? How is that possible?”

Etsuo grunted.

Lexi asked, “Have you told the Council?  What are they going to do about it?”

“Explain please,” protested Liriene.  “What does this mean, the course no longer exists?”

Lu propped a hand on her hip.  “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard!  There must be a course.  We’re obviously on our way to somewhere.”

Rune’s raised voice cut through the hubbub.  “All right, pipe down!”  The uproar died a quick death, as Gaspar nodded toward the navigator.  “Let the man tell his story, then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do with the information.  Go ahead, Sterling.”

Gregor’s brow furrowed in concentration.  “Well, let’s see …  I first noticed the anomalies about a week ago.”

“Anomalies?” interrupted Na’weh.

“Slight differences between current readings from the Novus S system and the master charts.  Naturally, I figured the problem was on our end … it happens.  So I ran the diagnostics, then ran them again—on the cameras, spectrographs, sensors, guidance system, you name it.  Nothing turned up, the operating systems were shipshape.  That’s when it finally hit me:  If the problem wasn’t on our end, it had to be in the star system.  I couldn’t believe it at first, so I went through the whole routine all over again.  There was no mistake.  Initial indications are faint, but unless I miss my guess, the entire quadrant has been rearranged.”

I held up a hand.  “Wait.  The entire quadrant has been rearranged?”

He nodded.  “We’re still several hundred parsecs away, but … yeah, that’s what it looks like.”

“If you’re right, that means Novus S—”

“—isn’t where it used to be.”

“How could that be?” Na’weh wondered.

Gregor shrugged.  “Best guess?  A galactic collision is the only phenomenon I know of that would be powerful enough to throw things that far out of whack.  Probably happened a thousand years ago, but because the distance was so great the light—”

“Forget the cosmology lesson, Sterling,” Ziv interrupted.  “Let’s get back to the part where you said Novus S isn’t where it was.  Where does that leave us?”

“Making a beeline to where it isn’t.”

“Well, there’s your problem,” Lu interjected, with a this-should-be-obvious roll of her eyes.  “All we have to do is find Novus S and set a new course that will get us there.”

“It’s not as simple as finding Novus S, I’m afraid,” Eran told her.  “If that sector underwent the kind of violent upheaval Sterling is describing, the planet’s orbit has probably changed.  It may no longer be habitable.”

“Oh, dear.”  Lu bit her lower lip in apparent consternation.

“So, what do we do now?” I asked.

“Adapt,” Gregor answered succinctly.  “Identify another destination.  I’ve already taken some preliminary readings on star systems in this region, and I think I’ve found a likely candidate.”

“Another planet?” I asked.

Gregor nodded.  “Frankly, the only reason we didn’t spot it before is, we weren’t looking.”

Eran’s gaze sharpened.  “What can you tell us about it?”

“As near as I can tell, it’s rocky, about the same size as Earth.  Orbiting a yellow dwarf.”

“A star similar to the Earth’s sun,” Eran explained.  “Will it support life?”

“I’d say odds are in our favor,” Gregor replied.  “Like I said, I’ve only done preliminary readings, and they aren’t as clear as I would like, because the orbit is partially obscured by the outer rim of a cosmic dust cloud.  We would need to swing around to another heading to get a good look.  But the planet appears to be in the habitable zone.”

“Meaning it’s neither too near, nor too far from its star,” Eran clarified for the rest of us.  “Either condition would make life on the surface impossible.”

Isidor spoke up for the first time.  “Sounds like a reasonable alternative to me.  We should at least check it out.  What did the Council say when you suggested the change of course?”

Gregor shifted uncomfortably.  Cleared his throat.  “I haven’t talked to the Council yet.”

Eran’s eyebrows climbed almost to his hairline.  “Why ever not?”

The navigator perched on the edge of Liriene’s desk and ran a hand over his thinning brown hair.  “My psych evaluation is coming up in a few days,” he sighed.

Lu gazed at him in obvious perplexity.  “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Quite a bit, as it turns out,” Rune cut in.  “Sterling is no longer among the party faithful.”

Eran nodded.  “I thought as much.  He’s one of us.  Why else would you bring him here tonight?”

“Yeah,” said Gregor.  “Too bad I didn’t know I had a ready-made support group when I made my discovery.”  He grimaced.  “But even if I had known, it wouldn’t have made any difference; I still wouldn’t have gone straight to the Council.”

“Why not?” asked Lexi.  “It’s not like they can tell you’re one of us just by looking at you.”

“I’ll tell you why not,” Rune interjected.  “Because this latest catastrophe is going to be murder for the Council to deal with on top of the social disaster already in progress.  Face it, convincing them to completely revamp the flight plan wouldn’t be a cakewalk in the best of times.  That bunch is nothing, if not set in their ways.  Hell, that’s putting it mildly.  We’re talking about people who’ve got a death grip on a four-hundred-year-old master plan.  They won’t give it up without a fight—especially now.”

Eran nodded.  “He’s right.  The Council is already under tremendous strain, struggling to hold its world together.  At this juncture, the mere suggestion they should make a major change will encounter violent resistance.  With all their defenses up and bristling, I doubt Garan and the rest will be remotely receptive.”

“Even if we do manage to get them to listen,” Rune continued, “and there’s no guarantee we can—what happens if and when they find out about Sterling’s new outlook on life?  We all know the answer to that, right?  They won’t even investigate his data.  They’ll blow off his observation as one more delusion, at least until the anomalies become undeniable.  Who knows how long that will be?”

“I decided to turn myself into Gaspar,” Gregor explained, “because I knew I would never make it through the evaluation mentally intact; they would find out about me for sure, and erase the whole mental slate, including what I had seen.  Before that happened, I figured I had to tell someone, and the chief of Intelligence struck me as the kind of guy who wouldn’t let this anomaly business drop, no matter how crazy it sounded.  Not until he had gotten the facts for himself, anyway.”

“He asked me to come to his quarters,” Rune added, then glanced at the navigator.  “That was a good move, by the way.”

Gregor shrugged.  “I didn’t want to taint the process with a record of our conversation.  Once they caught on to me, they would never believe me or anyone I talked to.  But if I could convince you to find a way to investigate on your own, without bringing my name into it … well, a witness like you would be hard to ignore.”  He smiled ruefully at Gaspar.  “Some independent witness you turned out to be.”

Ziv’s previously troubled expression brightened.  “If you’re looking for a corroborating witness, what about the second navigator?  Get her to back you up!  There’s no way the Council can dismiss both of you as delusional.  They would have to listen!”

Gregor was already shaking his head.  “Consuela came up from Deck Three less than six months ago.  She’s busy getting her feet wet, keeping her head down, and dreaming of the day she’ll take over as first nav.”

“She also passed her psych evaluation with flying colors today,” Rune told us.  “No way that poor, brainwashed kid is ready to rock the boat.”

“But the Council has to be told,” Lu insisted.

“She’s right,” Eran said.

Rune agreed with a brief nod.  “I know.”

“Suppose they refuse to listen?” asked Alis.  “What then?”

Isidor looked at her.  “Ever hear of The Flying Dutchman?”

“No.”

“According to ancient folklore, she was a ghost ship, a glowing apparition of a vessel doomed to sail the seas forever.  Oh, I know it sounds melodramatic but trust me, if the Council won’t listen and change our course, the Janus and will suffer the Dutchman’s fate, and take everyone on board with her.”

“Not everyone.”  Rune paused.  “All right, here’s what we’re going to do.  We are going to break the bad news to the Council.  Granted, they’re not high on our list of pals right now, but they deserve at least a chance to make the smart choice.  Sterling and I will talk to them on Wednesday.”

An undercurrent in his voice caught my attention and piqued my curiosity.  “This is Saturday.  Why wait three days?  Why not tell them tomorrow?”

“Because I want things ready on our end before we take this to them.  My gut tells me the immediate outcome of the Council meeting is a forgone conclusion—denial.  Whether or not they eventually get wise, or whether they dig their heels in and keep searching for Novus S ….”  He shrugged.  “Win, lose, or draw, I want to make sure they can’t stop us.”

“Can’t stop us from what?” I asked.

His gaze kindled with fierce satisfaction.  “From leaving.”

Ω

Chapter 43 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty-one

Two days later we got a cryptic message from Rune.  He contacted Eran and with terse instructions to, “Get everyone together at nineteen hundred hours on Tuesday and make sure you come up with a good cover story.”  Something was obviously up, but Gaspar being Gaspar, he didn’t elaborate on why he suddenly wanted to meet with all of us when he had been avoiding exactly that for weeks on end.

Liriene was the one who suggested the poetry reading as a “good cover story.”  We basically took a page from the Quingenti’s own playbook, adapting the tactics they had used to set up their fake “How to Make the Most of Your Life Conference” a few centuries earlier.  The ruse worked as well for us as it had for them.  We decided against contacting Rune with the particulars; much safer to let him see the announcement and figure it out himself.  We knew he would.

Liriene’s “Intimate Evening with the Great Poets” was advertised ship-wide.  It would begin at seven.  The hostess would give readings from the works of major nineteenth-century poets; wine and cheese would be served.  Space was extremely limited, seats to be reserved on a first-come-first-served basis, and the library would be closed to all other patrons during the event.  Two days after the invitation went out, several would-be participants received a short message from the librarian:  Thank you for your interest.  Regrettably, all available seats have been spoken for. However, I will hold a similar soiree very soon and will add your name to the list of those who will most certainly be invited to attend.

Only a handful of people knew the guest list had been locked in before the advertisement went out.

It was a simple, yet brilliant plan with a deliciously ironic twist—namely, the people who had come up with it first never caught on.  Impressed by Liriene’s logistical thoroughness, I had to wonder if Rune wasn’t rubbing off on all of us.  Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, that was a comforting possibility.

The night of, we arrived singly and in pairs, dressed to the nines and trying to act relaxed and sociable, at least until we got behind the closed portal.  This public display was no small feat, given the nerves jangled by Rune’s singularly uncommunicative communication.

With eleven of us there, the library should have seemed even cozier than usual—except cozy makes evokes thoughts of warmth and comfort and safety, not the pins-and-needles apprehension that gripped us as we waited for our host.  Seated next to Eran on the same bench where we had decided on our course of action—was it really only six months ago?—I absently fingered the top pearl-like button on my turquoise tunic and let my gaze wander over nine of the people who had come to be like family to me.  Each was coping with the tense wait in his or her own way.

Lu, for example, was taking refuge in her art.  Tucked away on a padded bench in one of the small alcoves carved in the right-hand bulkhead, she sketched busily, glancing up every now and then to study the three women on the balcony.  I had never seen Lu wear black before, but it suited her.  She looked positively statuesque in the unadorned floor-length gown that left her arms and shoulders bare, while its high collar combined with her upswept hair to accentuate the long, graceful line of her neck.

Her unwitting models—Alis, Liriene, and Na’weh—stood on the balcony with their backs to the shelves, their heads bent over a small blue volume in Liriene’s hand.  Side by side in a semicircle and dressed in pastels—Alis in a robin’s egg blue pantsuit, Liriene in a pale yellow micro-mini, and Na’weh in a caftan striped in shades of celery—they already reminded me of a painting.

Down on the first level, Lexi and Jordi sat at a long wooden table across from Isidor, Ziv, and a taciturn Etsuo.  I smiled inwardly over the fact that Etsuo’s formalwear was a slightly spiffier version of his overalls.  And only our agronomists could carry off evening clothes with an earthy touch—an olive green, off-the-shoulder gown for her and a rust-colored tunic for him.  Conversation at the table appeared desultory and half-hearted and as I watched, Isidor ran a nervous finger under the stand-up collar of his dove-gray tunic.

Distinguished-looking but uncomfortable, I decided with a small, fond grin.

Ziv chose that moment to glance at me, raising his eyebrows as if to say, What could you possibly have to smile about at a time like this? Since I didn’t know how to explain, I shrugged and diverted him by pointing from my shoulder to his.  He frowned down at his powder-blue tunic, plucked off the stray thread, and turned back to his companions.

“Ah.  The man of the hour arrives at last,” announced Eran, standing and sliding his left hand into the pocket of his tan jacket as the portal slid open.

Rune had indeed arrived, but he wasn’t alone—Gregor Sterling was with him.  Rune didn’t seem to notice the surprised gasps that punctuated their entrance and prompted the navigator to smile in self-conscious greeting.  Signaling for silence, Gaspar produced a wafer-thin hand-held device from his inside jacket pocket and moved to the center of the library, where he did a slow one eighty, taking an obvious reading.  Only then did it dawn on me how instinctively careful we had been with our conversation while we waited for him to show up.  Apparently, our security chief had managed to instill a bit of what he called tradecraft in us, whether we were conscious of it or not.

Once he was satisfied the room was clean, Rune re-pocketed the device and waved us all over toward Liriene’s desk.  “Huddle up, folks.  We’ve got a problem.”

I think I can safely say we’ve got a problem were the last words any of us wanted to hear.  Problems we already had and plenty of them.  We weren’t anxious to add another one, especially if it involved the kind of trouble that rated a risky all-hands-present-and-accounted-for meeting with Rune.  But having no other real choice, we huddled up as ordered.

“Go ahead, Sterling,” said Rune.  “Tell them.”

Gregor appeared uncertain.  “I don’t quite know where to begin.”

Rune swore softly.  “We don’t have time to tiptoe around this,” he announced bluntly.  “I’ll start; you fill in the gaps.  We have a new wrinkle,” he told the rest of us, watching our faces closely, “and it’s a big one.”  He paused.  “There’s a better than even chance the Colony is off course literally, as well as figuratively.”

“Say again?” said Eran.  “The Janus is off course?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” objected Gregor at the same time, drawing all eyes to him.  “That we’re off course, I mean.”

“Just how would you put it?” Eran asked.

The navigator’s green-brown gaze darted nervously around our huddle.  “It’s more like the course we were on no longer exists.”

Ω

Chapter 42 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved

Chapter Forty

“He thought he could put one over on them,” Rune snarled as Eran, Ziv, and I watched from the twin divans.  Prowling back and forth across my salon, the black-clad Gaspar reminded me of an ancient video I had once seen of a panther restlessly pacing its cage.  He stopped abruptly, facing us as he tossed up his hands.  “What the hell made him think he could pull it off?”

“Maybe he felt he had no choice,” Eran offered reasonably.  “Matheson probably believed he was on his own without a friend in the world.  Since he didn’t turn himself in, we can safely assume he had no desire to be returned to his former state.  Seeing no way around the evaluation, what could he do but gut it out and hope for the best?”

“Yeah?  Well, he didn’t get the best, did he?”  Rune went back on the prowl.  “Nobody makes it past the drug Huw and Iakona use to pry open their victims’ minds.  Ruvellanoxis strips your psyche.  There’s no hiding anything once that stuff hits your veins.  Believe me.  I’ve seen it in action.”

I shuddered inwardly but refused to dwell on the specter of Ruvellanoxis haunting my own future, focusing instead on Rune.  Despite his rant against poor doomed Hugo, I sensed our friend blamed himself for the man’s downfall.  Blowing off steam was fine under normal circumstances, but in this case, giving vent to misdirected anger wouldn’t get to the heart of the problem.  I decided to cut to the chase.

“Was there anything you could have done to prevent what happened to Hugo?” I asked.  My blunt question surprised Eran and Ziv—I could feel them staring at me—but I kept my eyes on Rune.  “Well?  Was there?”

He stalked over to stand in front of me, feet spread, hands fisted at his sides.  “What do you think?” he growled.

A few months ago, that tone would have had me diving for cover.  Now I didn’t so much as bat an eye.              “What do I think?” I answered evenly, keeping my compassion firmly under wraps.  Knowing Rune, a show of sympathy at this juncture would only complicate the issue.  “I think Enid and Jasun were ready and waiting when Hugo showed up for his psych evaluation, right?”

“Yeah.  So?”

“So, with them sitting right there, you had no chance to warn him.  How were you going to keep him from giving himself away?  Did you have a chance to talk to him before he showed up?  Did you know he was one of us?”

His combative stance relaxed slightly.  “No.”

“So you never had a chance to rescue him.”

Eran took my hand, squeezing my fingers in gentle approval as he said, “Some of them are bound to get past you, Rune.  You can’t save them all.”

Rune’s glare faded.  He blew out a breath, dropping his chin as he rubbed the back of his neck.  “No, I can’t.”  He raised his head, pinning us with the same tormented gaze I had seen in the corridor.  “But it’s like a knife to the heart every time we lose one.  And having to be the one to take down Matheson that way, deliver him up to Huw ….”  He pressed his lips together and shook his head.

“What a nightmare,” Ziv mumbled.

“Trust me,” Rune grunted as he sank down next to Ziv on the divan across from Eran and me, “you ain’t seen nothing yet.  This nightmare is only getting started.”  He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.  “We broke open the weapons locker today.”

I blinked.  “You have a weapons locker?”

“Sure,” he replied matter-of-factly.  “We’re in charge of security.  What did you expect?”  I shook my head dazedly.  “Anyway, based on this morning’s pursuit and the possibility of—and I quote—‘resistance of a more violent nature,’ the First Councilor ordered me to arm my agents with Inducers.”

Ziv frowned.  “Inducers?  That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“You only say that because you have a four-hundred-plus-year cushion of blissful ignorance between you and what used to be common knowledge,” Rune replied sardonically.  He reached around to the small of his back and drew out a weapon.  It was a uniform black from the hand grip to the short, sinister barrel.  “You’ve heard the expression in a world of hurt, right?” He hefted the weapon meaningfully.  “Well, this is your passport.  A pulsed energy weapon that triggers a plasma burst guaranteed to knock you off your feet, induce instant paralysis, and light up every pain neuron in your body.  We’re talking enough agony to make a strong man scream for mercy … if he could scream.”

“Lethal?” Eran wanted to know.

“It can be.  The power is scalable from stun to lethal.  So far, our orders are to keep them set on stun.  Garan may be jumpy, but he’s not out to kill anyone.”  Rune paused, eyes suddenly narrowed as if he were weighing unseen factors. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Not yet?”  Ziv chuckled uneasily.  “You make it sound like the Council is going to start executing anyone who disagrees with them.”  He glanced to Eran and me, obviously expecting us to scoff along with him.  When we didn’t, his expression turned incredulous, darting between us and Rune.  “Don’t tell me the three of you believe it might actually come to that?”

“I never actually believed it would come to Alpha Genesis or Inducers,” Eran answered.  “Did you?”

Ziv scowled uncertainly.  “No, but political assassination is something else again.”

“Look at it this way,” I suggested.  “The Quingenti won’t hesitate to fry someone’s brain to kill a newborn consciousness.  Isn’t that a kind of assassination?  Alpha Genesis takes lives, too, Ziv.  So in one sense, the they have already crossed the line.  Taking a physical life wouldn’t be much of a leap for them at this point.”

“She’s right,” Rune said.  “If we’re going to survive, we had better face facts:  The faithful will do whatever it takes to preserve the status quo.”

Ziv shook his head disbelievingly.  “But kill us?”

“You’re not looking at it from their point of view,” Rune reminded him.  “They don’t see each human life as a once-and-done deal, which means sooner or later, they’ll decide there’s nothing morally wrong with cutting ours short.  They might even convince themselves it’s the right thing to do—regrettable, maybe, but what the hell?  What’s one lifespan in the Colonial scheme of things?  We won’t be dead as they understand dead, because they’ll still have our DNA.”

“And as far as they’re concerned,” said Eran, “as long as the DNA lives, so do we.”

Rune’s lips twisted sardonically.  “It’s not assassination if nobody dies, Menka.”

“I’m beginning to think Ke-Ling had the right idea,” I mused.

Rune’s head whipped around, and he eyed me narrowly.  “Don’t even start down that road, Red.”  He nodded toward Eran.  “We’re working on a plan to get us out of this mess, and it won’t be long before we’re ready to put it into action.  But no matter what happens, there’s no way we’re going down without a fight.  We’re sure as hell not going to do the Quingenti any favors by taking a swan dive into that good night.”

Eran was regarding me thoughtfully.  “I don’t think she’s talking about suicide.”

“No, of course not.  I meant Ke-Ling was right about the DNA.”  I paused to gather my thoughts.  “I have a lot of faith in you two, and I’m sure your plan is a good one.  But ….”

“But what?” prodded Rune when I trailed off.

“But suppose they find out about one of us before you’re ready to move?  What if I’m taken, for example, and they zap me back to the Alpha State?  A couple of jolts, and I’m back on board with the whole cloning thing.”

“We would never let it get that far,” Rune assured me coldly.

“Maybe not, but I want replication completely off the table.  I want my life to count, even if I can’t remember why it should.  And what if they do resort to lethal force?  What if we do have to go down fighting?  I want my death to count, too.  I want to force everyone on this ship to deal with the fact that they ended my life, and I can never be replicated.  I want them to have to face what they’ve done … what they’ve become by doing it.”

“So what do you suggest?” Eran asked.

“Ke-Ling knew there was only one way to make the kind of statement I have in mind.”  I glanced at my three companions.  “We have to do what he did; we have to destroy our DNA.”

“Right!” Ziv agreed enthusiastically.  “Take the vials, get rid of the contents, replace the empty containers so nobody even notices the contents are missing … for a few decades, at least.”  He frowned.  “But they’re going to notice sooner or later.  What’s to stop them from replacing the original deposits with DNA drawn from our bodies … alive or dead?”

“Good question,” I admitted.   Now all we needed was a good answer.

Ziv pondered the problem a few moments longer, then brightened.  “How about a disinformation campaign?”

“How would that help?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Well, we could plant the idea that our aberrant behavior might signal a flaw in gene expression.”

My brow furrowed as I tried to keep up with him.  “Why would they believe that, when Ke-Ling and Abila both made it clear genetic abnormalities are a thing of the past?”

“That might be true of the DNA stored in a specially designed vault, but our bodies are another matter.  Maybe something went wrong during gestation?  A tiny glitch, unnoticed then, resulting in dire consequences now?  Or maybe,” he continued with gathering enthusiasm, “it’s due to the effects of prolonged spaceflight!  Over-exposure to cosmic background radiation or something!  Nobody’s ever been out this long, right?”

I smiled slowly.  “Oh, I get it.  We’d need evidence,” I murmured, thinking furiously.  “I know!  Rune can ask Alis to get a DNA specimen from Matheson.  If a gene can be repaired, it can be sabotaged, right?  She might be able to fake a slight mutation!”

“And Rune can hack into the medical records and plant evidence of  the same genetic hiccup in all our files!  All without leaving a trace!” Zivon concluded triumphantly.

“Well, well, well,” drawled Rune.  “Will you listen to these two?”  He glanced between Ziv and me.  “Think you’ve got it all figured out, do you?”  Why he seemed so pleased, I couldn’t imagine, until he went on, “Not bad.  Not bad at all.  As a matter of fact, I couldn’t have done better myself.”  He looked at Eran.  “I don’t plan to be around long enough need this scheme of theirs, but backup isn’t a bad idea.”

“So you’ll do it?” I asked.  “You’ll talk to Alis?”

He nodded slowly.  “Yeah.  We’ll see what we can do.”

Ω

Chapter 41 coming next week!

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved