Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 5

  His gentle smile was displaced by a scowl of irritation. “It’s not that important, love.” He turned to his plate and commenced to shovel his food into his mouth. It was obvious that he was chewing and swallowing too quickly to enjoy the experience, simple as the flavors and textures were.

  She reached across him and laid a hand on his remaining arm. His eyes filled with uncertainty and surprise.

  “You are not,” she said in a measured cadence, “some sort of charity case. You are not a half-useful mendicant the rest of us will begrudge to carry. You are not a burden or a drag on Clan Morelon. You are its patriarch—its leader and its pride. You can’t imagine how angry your kinsmen are about what was done to you. Have you talked with any of them yet?”

  He looked briefly away. “No.”

  “Why not? Do you have any idea how eager they are to avenge you?”

  His brow furrowed. “I know they respect me, but—”

  “They love you, Bart.” She clutched at his arm. “Any one of them—the women, too—would gladly court death for a shot at the bastard who maimed you. I just realized who you need to speak to first.”

  “Who?”

  “Althea.” She felt the bloodthirsty grin of four days earlier blossom on her face. “When she heard what happened to you, it took everything I had to dissuade her from destroying the attacking clans on the spot.” She shrugged. “I sort of wanted her to do it, which made it harder.”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  They swung about to confront Douglas Kramnik, who stood in the archway with arms crossed.

  “Bart,” he said, “there isn’t anyone in this house...or mine...that wouldn’t run naked through a bonfire for a crack at those sons of bitches. The only thing holding us back is that Althea isn’t here. She insisted that we wait for her...and that she’ll be bringing something special to help with it.”

  Kramnik’s face worked.

  “You’re still the patriarch of Clan Morelon...and my son. From everything I’ve seen and heard, you’ve served your clan loyally, and your clan will stand by you just as loyally. And regardless of whether you decide some day to lay down the patriarchy, you’ll always be my son. You’ll always have my love. Now sit and eat as if you had all the time in the world to enjoy what’s in front of you.”

  Bart turned to Nora. She indicated the plate before him with a toss of her head.

  “Before it gets cold, love.”

  “It won’t get cold,” Cecile said.

  She removed his earlier serving and laid a fresh, steaming plate before him.

  “Eat hearty, most high and beloved patriarch.”

  He groaned. “Not you too, Cece?”

  Nora giggled. “Her too, love. It sort of...caught on.”

  * * *

  Arthur Hallanson could not quite believe his ears.

  “You’re staying up there?”

  “Not forever, Art. It’s just going to take a little longer than I thought at first.” Claire Albermayer chuckled. “Not every service call is a matter of pouring in a few fresh nanites and some feedstock.”

  Hallanson glanced over his shoulder at the rustle from the assembly behind him. More than a few of the faces were tinged with irritation.

  “Do you have any idea how long it might be, Claire? The rest of the company is a bit put out that you undertook this ‘service call’ personally. They think it’s below the appropriate attentions of our chief executive and lead technologist.”

  “I can’t say at the moment. Just make sure Ernest DuBreuill gets everything on the list. I’m going to need it all. Then get busy buying replacements for every item he takes, because what he brings up here will be staying here. And Art? Tell the others that I’m learning things that I’m eager to incorporate in our next line of medipods. This service call could prove to be the most profitable unplanned event in our corporate history. Perhaps that will mollify them.”

  “Seriously, Claire?”

  “Seriously. I’ve acquired samples of an entirely new nanite. It has capabilities I’ve never seen in anything before, including our most advanced creations. If I can grasp how it does what it does, it will accelerate every one of our development efforts by orders of magnitude. By the way, have the occupants been dispatched yet?”

  Hallanson chuckled. “You mean the occupiers, I’m sure. Yes, they’re gone. They received a communication from their leadership to the effect that to remain here any longer was unnecessary and would expose their clans to unfortunate consequences. We were glad to see them depart.”

  “I’m sure. Please tell everyone that I hope to be home fairly soon, so they can concentrate on their work rather than worry about me.” Claire Albermayer paused briefly. “You know, Art, I’ve found the Relic to be a unique and fascinating place to visit. Althea Morelon has been a most gracious host, and I’ve been having a very good time.”

  “Claire...”

  “Never fear, Art. I will be coming back, just not right away. Bearing gifts, at that. I’ll speak to you again soon.”

  * * *

  Claire Albermayer set the microphone on its hook and turned to Althea.

  “I think I can trust that my ‘shopping list,’ as you put it, will be filled to specification.”

  Althea grinned. “Even though you’re all finished with analyzing my blood and fat?”

  Claire’s expression turned naughty. “Oh! I forgot to mention that to my colleagues below, didn’t I? What an oversight.” She stretched sensuously, luxuriating in her nudity. “I think I’ll find uses for a simulation suite, an assembly tank, and a set of nanodebuggers. Besides, what sort of quantum physics laboratory is this that doesn’t even have an electron microscope? I’m surprised that you got anywhere at all!”

  Althea shrugged. “You can get a lot done with a good magnifying glass and a sharp pair of tweezers.”

  Claire giggled, a sound Althea had never heard from her before.

  I’d bet my last deka no one else has ever heard it, either.

  “You’re quite sure this is all right?” Claire said.

  Althea looked briefly away.

  If her conscience is starting to bother her, maybe I should have a second chat with mine.

  “As far as I can tell,” she said. “Besides, we’re up here alone. Who has to know?”

  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Althea wanted to reel them back. All the pleasure fled Claire Albermayer’s countenance in an instant.

  “The ethical status of an action doesn’t change according to who knows about it, Althea.”

  “True. But if no one is harmed—”

  “Meaning what?”

  Althea’s eyebrows rose. “Unjustly deprived of life, liberty, or rightful property.”

  “That’s the restitutive definition.”

  Althea frowned. “So?”

  “A judge will dismiss certain kinds of harms as irremediable by restitutive action,” Claire said. “That doesn’t mean no harm has occurred. Some harms leave the victim materially whole.”

  Althea started to reply, halted herself.

  She’s right.

  “You’re worried about Martin, aren’t you?” Althea said.

  “And you,” Albermayer replied.

  “Hm? Why me?”

  “Because,” Claire said, “I don’t want to pollute what the two of you have.”

  Althea nodded. “I understand, Claire.” She beckoned the bioengineer into her arms and looked directly into her eyes. “I don’t think that’s possible, for you or anyone. You haven't met Martin. He’s...well, he’s special.” Specially chosen for me. “I can’t even express how I feel for him. It goes beyond any words I possess.

  “Besides,” she continued, “this isn’t that sort of love, or that sort of bond. It’s admiration, and companionship, and pleasure and comfort at an unpleasant, uncomfortable time. We’re friends exchanging gifts only friends can give. Helping one another to cope. I can’t see how that could be wrong.”

  Claire lowe
red her eyes. “I don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “Nor I you,” Althea said. “And you won’t be, I promise. Now that I’ve known you...this way, I can’t imagine ever hurting you, even with words.

  “When we’re both back on the surface of Hope, things will change. I’ll have responsibilities to attend to at once, and so will you. But I’ll always love you. I’ll always come when you call. We’re sisters now, Claire. I’d defend you with my life. And I know you’d do the same. I will never allow you to be lonely or cold ever again. Inside or out.”

  She caressed Claire’s back and shoulders, marveling afresh that the skin of a woman more than a century old could be so soft, even with the unlimited use of all the ingenious therapies HalberCorp had developed.

  The bioengineer relaxed and laid her head against Althea’s shoulder. She tightened her grip on her friend, as if despite all that had passed between them she still feared that Althea might somehow slip away. Althea crooned softly to her, a sweet, wordless song of reassurance and unconditional acceptance.

  “That toy you liked is probably fully recharged by now,” Althea murmured against her friend’s cheek. “Would you like to play with it some more?”

  Claire looked Althea in the eyes once more. “Will you hold me?”

  “Of course.”

  Claire smiled and nodded.

  Althea kissed her.

  ====

  November 35, 1325 A.H.

  “You’re sure?” Althea said.

  Claire Albermayer wore the smile of a conqueror. “Beyond all question, love.” She nodded at the reams of analysis her assay programs had generated. “Better than I hoped, in fact. The simulations were a hundred percent accurate. The counteragent doesn’t just neutralize the invaders, it destroys them. No slightest possibility of reassembly, much less of reanimating their original function.”

  This could be it.

  “Is there any downside for an infected body?”

  “Only a mild fever. It should last no more that forty-eight hours. The counteragent goes dormant once the invader nanites are destroyed.”

  “Well, does the counter-nanite have any vulnerabilities?”

  Claire’s smile faded. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there anything—any process, any environment, or any imaginable event that could prevent it from doing what we want it to do?”

  “Not that I—” Claire said, and fell silent.

  Althea waited.

  Presently Claire said, “Do you expect the counteragent to be exposed to some unusual condition?”

  “Afraid so, babe,” Althea said. “Ballistic acceleration and re-entry heating.”

  “Hm.” Claire rose from her seat at her workstation. “I hadn’t considered anything but a body environment under standard conditions. Are you certain you’ll need to subject the counter-nanite to those stresses?”

  Althea nodded. “Unless I want to fight a one-woman war against an entire planetary society.”

  The bioengineer’s face drained of all expression. She regarded her friend as somberly as a mortician might regard a fresh client. Althea summoned all her patience.

  “When you first outlined the problem you brought me here to solve,” Claire said, “I assumed that the invader nanites were an unforeseen mutation. An accidental development from something its designer intended to be entirely benign. I couldn’t imagine anyone on Hope even wishing for such a thing, much less setting out to produce it. It would be the foulest of all crimes, and against the entire species, at that. If one of my colleagues below were ever to produce such a horror, his continued existence would depend upon the facts never becoming known. If they ever were, his lifespan from that instant forward would be measured in hours.”

  “I know,” Althea said. She flowed forward to take Claire in her arms, caressed her back and shoulders, and let her hands settle lightly upon her friend’s rump. The bioengineer cooed and writhed gently against her.

  Amazing how natural this has become.

  They’d taken to going about nude at all times. Althea’s habitat in the Relic was no longer merely a place of enterprise. It had become a playground. Their love play interleaved naturally with their labors; it had become spontaneous, free-form, and utterly carefree. Claire’s mood had prospered considerably from her unfettered access to Althea’s body. She claimed she’d never been able to think so clearly or work so fluidly in her life.

  It hasn’t done me any harm, either.

  “We have to start with something a little more...basic,” Althea murmured. “You’re a good person, Claire. Probably you’ve never known anyone who isn’t a good person—at least, decent enough that you didn’t have to fear for yourself when you were alone with him. That’s Mankind on Hope: generally decent, generally mutually respectful, and generally safe for human consumption.”

  Generally. Not entirely.

  “But the system I visited isn’t like that,” she continued. “I didn’t expect what I encountered. Not at all, really. I didn’t expect to find an intelligent civilization there at all, much less a race so close to ours in all ways that we’d have to consider them first cousins at the very least. I couldn’t have imagined I’d run head-first into a sub-species of Man that would use me for its own purposes.

  “But that’s what I found.

  “They called themselves Loioc. They’d been waiting for me, Claire. They’d expected for centuries that a starfarer from Hope would eventually come their way. They had plans for what to do with him when he got there. That starfarer turned out to be me. And the purpose they wanted to use me for was to impose the pattern of their society on Hope: a society where only the women are able to think.

  “Their men have been nonsentient for more than two millennia. One of their geneticists isolated the sentience constellation in the human genome and designed a sex-linked nanite that would eradicate it from a Y-chromosome-bearing zygote. It was her answer to their problems with violence and war. Loioc women all venerate that evil bitch as their culture’s greatest hero.”

  The memory of Vellis’s mindless lust and Efthis’s casual betrayal sent a shudder through her. Claire massaged her neck and shoulders in response.

  “They sucker-punched me,” Althea said. “They seduced me with bright smiles and a veneer of hospitality. I wasn’t as cautious as I should have been. Spooner’s beard, Claire, I was too excited to be cautious at all. And before I knew it, they’d made me a carrier for their evil little guest.”

  Althea waved at her decommissioned medipod.

  “I got into that pod hoping and praying that it would cleanse me. I had no idea whether it could do the job. I can’t bring myself to care that I killed it, despite the expense. I only care that it saved me—and that you could use what you found in it to defeat their scheme.”

  She tightened her arms around her friend.

  “Claire,” she said, “as I look back on it all, I’m glad it was me, and that they seduced me into carrying their nanite. Because the combination of their deceit, my rage, and your genius will result in the liberation of an entire planetful of slaves.”

  Claire Albermayer’s eyes had filled with tears.

  “A whole planetful, Althea?”

  Althea nodded. “I intend to take a big batch of your counter-nanites back to their system and saturate their planet with them.” She did a quick mental calculation. “I’ll need a lot of them—about a hundred sextillion, I think. I’ll load them into small re-entry capsules designed to break up when they hit water, and fire them into their oceans and their biggest lakes. It won’t do anything for the men already under their thumbs, but their next generation of male children will be intelligent and sentient, and the women won’t be able to do the least little thing about it. And if there’s any justice in the universe, those men will come to maturity absolutely furious.”

  Claire’s tears dried swiftly. A vulpine grin formed on her face.

  “Do you think I...might be able to come with you?”

  Alth
ea returned that bloodthirsty grin.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way, love.”

  The bioengineer nodded.

  “Then I’d better get back to work.”

  * * *

  Patrick Wolzman could have been a stone carving. He hadn’t even twitched as Charisse laid out her proposal. She compelled herself to sit silently as she awaited his response.

  Presently he said, “Why me, Charisse?”

  “You, Patrick,” she said, “because you were first to grasp the implications when Alex and I called the clans together to formulate a plan of action.” She grinned. “Granted that that plan didn’t work out as we’d hoped.”

  He nodded minutely and gazed down at his hands, flattened palms-down on the surface of his modest desk.

  He’s as unassuming as Alex is assertive. Would that have been a better fit for me?

  She forbade herself to think of her estranged husband.

  “And you think,” Wolzman said, “that economic coercion might succeed where naked force failed?”

  “Economic persuasion, Patrick.” Charisse dropped her voice to its lowest octave. “Coercion always involves a threat of violence for noncompliance. Merely choosing no longer to trade with the Morelons is an entirely nonviolent approach.”

  He did not look at her.

  “So the six clans would retreat from force to ostracism,” he said.

  Charisse nodded. “Assuming we can persuade Alex that a second effort would be worthwhile.”

  That brought Wolzman’s eyes up to meet hers. “Has he at last mustered some resistance to your wiles?”

  Charisse’s mouth fell open. She sat rigidly still.

  “I’ve known Alex for quite a while,” Wolzman said. “And I knew how taken he was with you. Is that no longer the case, Charisse?”

  “We’ve had...some difficulties recently,” she forced out.

  Wolzman nodded. “I thought that might be the case. He’s become uncooperative, hasn’t he? And with Althea’s threat to pursue you to the ends of Hope, you’ve decided to look for a new collaborator and protector.” His smirk was devoid of pleasure. “I suppose I would have done the same.”