The Golden Way (The Kestrel Chronicles Book 3) Page 12

  “What cases?” said Erdos.

  “Aren’t we getting a little off the track here?” said Jaemon. “We’re supposed to be trying to figure out what’s happened to Gebre Isaac and our artifact, aren’t we?”

  “Are you a member of the Church, Zang?” said the Captain.

  “No,” said Zang. “Why?”

  “I didn’t think so. I’m curious why this discussion upsets you so.”

  “I’m not upset,” said Zang heatedly. “I just think all this talk of the Church robbing and murdering us is crazy, that’s all.”

  The Captain glanced at Jaemon. Erdos and Zang glared at each other.

  “You’re not a member of the Church either, Commander Erdos?” said the Captain.

  “No,” she said truculently. “I was raised in it, but I’m not a member.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jaemon.

  Zang sighed and put a hand over her eyes.

  “What do you mean ‘raised in it?’” said Jaemon.

  “What?” said Erdos lifting both hands. “I grew up in the Church. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” said Jaemon. “Nothing at all. Only we didn’t know that you grew up. Or that Zang did.”

  Zang smiled at Jaemon without sincerity.

  “Fine,” she said. “Yes, I used to be a child. Can we move on?”

  “So?” said Erdos. “Is that a crime or something?”

  “We had a conversation about children earlier,” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Jaemon. “It was interesting. It’s more interesting now.”

  “What’s so goddamn interesting about it?” Zang said. “I was a child. I grew up in the Church. I didn’t take refuge. End of story, okay? Why are we talking about my personal history, anyway?”

  Jaemon lifted his hands.

  “No reason,” he said.

  “If that’s all true,” said the Captain, “Then you might have a different perspective on the Church than the rest of us.”

  “Yeah?” said Erdos. “What ‘different perspective?’”

  Jaemon shrugged.

  “Maybe that’s why you don’t think they can do any wrong.”

  “I never said that,” said Erdos.

  “No, you just get pissed off any time anybody suggests otherwise.”

  “I’m not pissed off!” Erdos shouted, slamming her hands down on the tabletop.

  Zang stared at her, startled. She shot a wide-eyed look at Jaemon.

  Erdos pushed herself back into her chair.

  “Sorry,” she said quietly. She flushed.

  “I hope my next question won’t offend you,” said the Captain.

  “What?” said Erdos and Zang together, both sounding exasperated.

  “Is Solomon’s captain a member of the Church?”

  “Your father,” said Jaemon.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Erdos hotly. “I’m aware of who my father is.”

  30.

  Doctor Yaug’s ‘cabin’ was an entire deck of Kestrel, situated below the maintenance level that served the ship’s bridge. Rayleigh Scientific had created it by converting two decks into one in order to provide enough room for the instruments and processing clusters that Yaug required. It looked extravagant, but the financing for the modifications had come from Yaug himself.

  “Don’t you ever rest?” I said, floating in the darkness among Yaug’s purring, winking machinery.

  “I rest,” Yaug said, “But like you I lack a sleep cycle. Haven’t we discussed this before?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Well, your memory is more reliable than mine,” he said.

  “It seems that the commander of Solomon is a member of the Church of the Makers,” I said.

  Yaug, floating high above me among his devices, paused for a moment.

  “That doesn’t seem unlikely,” he said. “The Church has always had a prominent role in Jovian society.”

  “Jaemon encourages me to be skeptical of coincidence,” I said.

  Yaug pushed at support struts and drifted down to where I was floating just above the deck. He was a blob of blackness descending slowly. When he reached the deck he shrank, folding the skirt of his robe to a point, alighting gently to look into my face. His own golden face was serene.

  “A sound policy for any kind of investigator,” he said.

  “You know,” I said, “I think your false face is quite successful. Your smile is expressive.”

  “Yes,” said Yaug. “I think you’re right. Your work on the prosthesis is first-rate.”

  “It’s your design,” I said.

  “Ours,” said Yaug. “But leaving that aside, what coincidence in particular do you mean?”

  “Several, actually. Someone attacked us using commando methods. Of the two militaries aboard Solomon, one of them belongs to the Church.”

  “Yes,” said Yaug. “I remember.”

  “You were the one who called it out to begin with,” I said. “Theodora Harken claims that it’s Gebre Isaac who is behind the theft. One of the first things I noticed about Gebre Isaac was that he wears a Makerist chaplain’s glyph.”

  “Yes, that’s an interesting coincidence,” said Yaug. “Is there more?”

  “The Captain suggested that the Church has a particular interest in archaeological artifacts like our missing cargo. Commander Erdos tells us that her father, Captain-General Erdos, the commanding officer of Solomon, is a member in good standing of the Church.”

  “You already mentioned that,” said Yaug. “What else?”

  I thought for a moment.

  “I think that’s it,” I said. “Oh, one more thing. Isaac mentioned Kenjiro Isono when we were talking about the missing artifact.”

  “The shipboard knight?” said Yaug. “That’s right, he did. Interesting. I see the outline of the hypothesis. Gebre Isaac, acting for the Church, staged the robbery because he believes our artifact might house the remains of Kenjiro Isono. Is that what you have in mind?”

  “Assuming Kenjiro Isono actually existed,” I said.

  “You’ve talked it over with Captain Rayleigh, then. Or perhaps with Director Harken.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Isono is a real person in the popular imagination,” said Yaug. “Historians are not so sure.”

  I cocked my head at him.

  “How is it that you know so much about so many subjects?” I said.

  “Lev, you were manufactured a dozen years ago. I’m sure that seems like a long time to you, but I’ve lived—well, I’ve lived much longer than that.”

  “And you have a curious mind,” I said.

  “That is certainly true.”

  “And considerable capacity. Are there limits to learning? Do you know?”

  “You know there are,” said Yaug. “You were aboard Kestrel when the Cold Ones temporarily lifted our limits.”

  I thought about it and then nodded.

  “You’re right,” I said. “For a few moments I knew things that I cannot encompass now. Sometimes it troubles me.”

  He smiled sympathetically.

  “Perhaps you can appreciate why I’m reluctant to give up my augmentations.” He tapped the side of his brow with one long finger. “They help me keep more of my understanding than I could have in a conventional human body.”

  “We don’t have to use a conventional human body for you,” I said. “We could design something that would accommodate your requirements.”

  “No doubt,” said Yaug. “Perhaps we should. But every time I start down that path I find myself paralyzed by choices.”

  “Paralyzed?”

  “There are so many options. I don’t know what to choose. In the end I always give up thinking about it. After all, my present body serves me well enough, and the robe and your prostheses help me fit in.”

  “Maybe ‘fit in’ is overstating it. You tend to stand out.”

  “Ha! Point taken. Does the Captain share your theory? Does Jaemon?�
��

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I think so. But I’m not sure I’d call it a ‘theory.’ It’s really just a collection of suggestive coincidences.”

  “Didn’t you just say it’s best not to assume coincidence?” said Yaug.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose I was hoping that you would help me confirm or deny my speculations.”

  “I see what you see,” said Yaug. “I imagine what you imagine. I don’t think I have any special information that you lack—at least in this particular case.”

  “You were the first of us to connect the Church to the robbery.”

  “Not really. I just thought it was odd that the Consortium would allow a foreign military aboard a capital ship.”

  “I see.”

  “If there’s anything I know that you don’t, perhaps it’s that the partnership between the Church and the Consortium has always been a tenuous one. You might think otherwise if you’re not a student of history. From what I understand, tensions between them have been rare during the decades when I was...indisposed.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “I’ve never paid much attention to history or current events. I’ve always thought of the Church and the Consortium as steady allies.”

  “Perhaps that’s what they’ve been all your life. Or even longer than that. But before my long rest they were often at odds. The Church and the Consortium have even fought skirmishes, though never an open war.”

  “Do you think Gebre Isaac might be acting as an agent of the Church? Acting against the Consortium?”

  “I have no reason to think he’s particularly hostile to the Consortium. I’m only suggesting that he might not be all that loyal to it, despite his House Erdos commission. A chaplain always has some loyalty to his church. Or to his faction of the Church.”

  “Faction?”

  “Whatever the Church would like us to believe, it is not a single, monolithic institution. It is not a harmonious whole, all true doctrine and timeless policy descending direct from the minds of the Makers.”

  “There are divisions within it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Cracks in its foundations?”

  “No,” said Yaug, “because there never was a single foundation. For all the thousands of years of its power the Church has been a world of secrets and intrigues and carefully-concealed power struggles.”

  I thought about that.

  “So what you’re saying,” I said after a moment, “Is that even if we trace this stuff back to the Church, we haven’t really found out who’s behind it.”

  “That’s not exactly what I meant to say,” he said, “But it is true.”

  “Well, that’s going to annoy Jaemon and Zang,” I said.

  31.

  I tapped gently on Zang’s hatch. There was no answer for a moment. I hesitated, then she said, softly, “Come in, Lev.”

  The hatch slid back and I floated into her cabin. All the cabins were small, but they benefited from Kestrel’s general luxury. Her bulkheads were paneled in dark wood. Her deck was covered by a blue and burgundy self-cleaning carpet.

  She was in a light sleeper, short legs and sleeves, a blue a little lighter than the color of her carpet. She pushed herself back from the hatch and caught the edge of her bunk. It was still mussed.

  “Did I wake you?” I said.

  “Nah,” she said. “I was about to get up anyway. Have a seat.”

  There was a single chair, held to the floor by the carpet’s grip. I drifted over and stuck myself to it.

  “How do you feel?” I said.

  She looked at me sharply.

  “Why?”

  “We were all killed and reconstructed. You seemed upset at the meeting with Erdos.”

  She sighed heavily.

  “Why is it something’s wrong with me just because I don’t agree with the Captain’s vendetta against the Church?”

  “I didn’t notice any sign of a vendetta,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Why aren’t you asking Jaemon these questions?”

  “He’s next,” I said. “I am the ship’s doctor, after all. Your health and comfort are my responsibility”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” she said.

  “I agree,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t offer help when you seem tired or out of sorts.”

  “What do you mean ‘out of sorts?’”

  “Nothing special,” I said.

  She glared at me, but then gave it up after a few moments.

  “You and Erdos are very similar,” I said.

  She snorted.

  “You think?”

  I cocked my head at her.

  “Why do you assume,” I said, “That you must be the same simply because you are clones?”

  “You’re kidding right?” she said.

  “Not at all,” I said. “My model run produced sixteen thousand three hundred eighty-four copies of me. I trained with a hundred twenty-eight of them. I’ve met perhaps thirty or forty from other cohorts. I’ve never met anyone exactly like me.”

  “That’s different,” she said. “You’re a mech.”

  “So?” I said. “I’d think that would make us more alike, not less.”

  “You’re made to be different from each other,” she said.

  “How so?”

  “Well, you’re programmed that way, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Nothing in my software design is specifically intended to ensure differences from my siblings in personality or outlook.”

  “So you’re all the same?”

  “Correction,” I said. “We start the same. Or as much the same as any two physical things can be. But we begin to be different people from the first moments of our existence.”

  She mulled it over.

  “Okay,” she said. “So what’s your point?”

  “You and Erdos are biologicals. You may be clones, but you were never as much the same as I and my siblings. None of my siblings and I are the same. Why should you expect to be the same as Erdos?”

  She shook her head and looked away.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “It’s different for us.”

  “How?”

  “Erdos was made to be me. She was my replacement. All of a sudden there were two of me, and one of us was extra.”

  She pressed her lips together.

  “Erdos was the beta?” I said.

  Zang looked at me, eyes wide.

  “Sure,” she said. “What did you think? That it was the other way around?”

  “I suppose I did,” I said. “Though it doesn’t really matter.”

  “Not to you, maybe,” she said. “It sure mattered to me.”

  “What happened?” I said. “A creche accident?”

  She sat very still, looking at nothing.

  “I was out in the Way, following up on a lead. It was some claim-jumping complaint, filed by a company working out of the Ring. Solomon’s got a big market. The whole Way does business here. Anyway, the bastards ambushed me. I got a couple of them, but they shot me up and shoved me out an airlock. I drifted for a week or two.”

  “You died?”

  “Yeah. They punched my ticket but good. My membrane plugged my holes and chilled me. Some Tumbolians found me drifting. They fixed me up, got my ticker started back up again. In a few weeks I was good as new.”

  “But you found out that you had already been revived.”

  “Yep.”

  She flushed. She closed her eyes. Her mouth was a tight line.

  “I had a life and a career, goddamn it!” she said. She took a deep breath and let it out again. “Then I didn’t.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “Oh, hell,” she said, sniffing and daubing at her eyes with a wrist. “The new Erdos was very damn nice. ‘Welcome home!’ You should have seen the way she hugged me. My father cried. That was weird. I don’t think I ever saw him cry
before, not even when my mother died permanently.”

  “But you couldn’t have your old life back.”

  “No, god damn it,” she said vehemently. “I flatlined. I was legally dead. Erszbet Erdos was somebody else now. Somebody else!”

  She said that last through gritted teeth. She punched her fist hard into her bunk.

  “Did you talk to Erdos about it?” I said.

  “What was there to talk about?” she said, eyes and hands wide. “My life was hers, fair and square. I died! She was the new Erszbet Erdos! I had no legal claim to that identity.”

  “Maybe she would have relinquished her claim if you had asked.”

  She snorted.

  “You forget,” she said. “I know what she’s like. She’s me. She wants the same things I want. I wouldn’t have given up my whole life just because somebody asked. That job was everything to me. It was my life. It’s the same for her. It has to be! She’s me!”

  The tears were welling now, but she didn’t sob or simper. She sat quietly, face red, eyes streaming, staring into her personal abyss.

  “So you didn’t ask,” I said.

  She shook her head.

  “All of a sudden I was extra, you know? What did they need me for? They had—” she waved a hand in the air. “Solomon was my whole life,” she said. “My whole goddamn life. If I wasn’t Erszbet Erdos anymore then who was I? What was I?”

  She looked at me, eyes shining. Tears broke free and floated. The sobs came up without warning, shaking her. She pressed a hand to her eyes and coughed out the sobs one at a time.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  “Not your fault,” she said, waving a hand extravagantly.

  “No,” I said. “But I can feel for you.”

  She laughed cynically.

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’ve got a robot for a sob sister.”

  “That’s unkind,” I said. “You know I have feelings, just as you do.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She covered her eyes again and the sobs returned. After a moment she took another breath and said, “I’m kind of mean sometimes.”

  “When you’re hurt,” I said. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” she said. She dropped her hand from her face and looked at me. “I’ve never seen you upset. I don’t think you have a mean bone in your body.”