Death Sentence (9 page)

SEVEN

SHORT AND LONG

Learned Searcher Taranarak stood placidly and listened to the bumping and thumping from the outside of her house as her jailers unbolted the door. Taranarak had had time to think things through. She had, thus far, been confined for thirty-two days--a barbarically long sentence by Metrannan standards--but she had found the solitude restful, even useful.

The door swung open. "Come! Now!" one of them shouted. But she was in no hurry. They had kept her under house arrest, with the doors sealed, the windows covered, and all communications cut off. If they were so disorganized as to be in a hurry when it came time for her to depart, that was not her problem. Nor was it her duty to put the Bureaucracy of Order in a good mood. She took her time, preparing herself carefully for departure, then stepping out of the house calmly and slowly, pleased to see that her state of calm was unnerving them even more than she had expected.

They urged her outside and toward the transport waiting on the landing pad by her house. It was her first time outside since her confinement had begun. They urged her forward, but, just as they reached the transport, the guards paused, as if by habit, as if every prisoner stopped at that point, and they had been trained to expect it.

No doubt most prisoners stopped to enjoy the feel of fresh air, the sense of a sky overhead, at least the momentary illusion of freedom. But Taranarak stopped to stare in horrified astonishment at the city vista spread out before her.

Her home was in the hills to the northwest of the city center, and it had a magnificent view of the whole grand sweep of the metropolis. But she had not seen that view for a long time, because they had been petty enough to board up her windows.

She saw towering plumes of smoke over the city and the marks of fire, disorder, destruction. She heard shouts, cries, the muffled, far-off
thud
of an explosion. Emergency vehicles of all sorts were rushing through the skies in every direction. She allowed herself to be guided into the aircar and stared numbly out the window as the aircar lifted off. It was bad enough to look down on the city torn by riot. But it was worse, far worse, to realize that it was possible, even likely, that she had
caused
those fires and riots.

The Order Patrol aircar swung south and east toward the center of the city, affording her a terrifying panorama of the city in chaos. The aircar began its descent toward the plaza in front of the Bureaucracy's headquarters. The plaza was in utter turmoil. A burned-out aircar lay on its side, windows smashed, smoke still rising from its interior. Order Squad teams were struggling to hold back a crowd of angry, shouting protesters as workers rushed to assemble a heavy-duty barricade to surround the building.

It had been dozens of generations since an Order Squad had been forced to deal with violent protest, and it was plain they were woefully unprepared to handle the situation. Everything looked improvised, thrown together, poorly planned.

The aircar landed with a heavy bump, and she was being bundled out of the vehicle almost before it stopped moving. Just at that moment, the crowd surged forward, almost as if the landing were some sort of cue or signal. The Order Squad teams gave way, and suddenly she was swept up in a sea of angry, shouting Metrannans. She was knocked off her feet, but the crowd was so dense she could not fall down.

Suddenly, ungentle hands seized her by her right arms, and an Order Patrol officer was pulling her toward the Bureaucracy's main entrance. All of her disdain for the Order Service vanished in that moment, instantly transforming into pathetic, fearful gratitude for their protection.

As suddenly as the riot had engulfed her, she was pulled out of it and half-thrown through the heavily reinforced doors of the Bureaucracy's main entrance, stumbling through a lobby filled with worried Patrol officers, improvised care stations, command centers, and piles of ruined furniture shoved out of the way in corners or pressed into service as part of an interior barricade.

They got her into an elevator. They started it up and ushered her out onto an upper floor. It was a place of unexpected normalcy, up high enough that the shouts and cries of the mob outside were but dim murmurs. The smells of smoke, sweat, and fear so strong and pungent down below were here only the faintest hint, the merest whiff of disaster.

The officers guided her down a hallway. One of them swung open a massive ornamental door, and the others steered her through it.

She stepped inside, heard the door boom shut behind her--and found she was not before the Council of Determination she had expected, but rather a much different sort of meeting. They were not in the exalted, high-ceilinged, steely-grey confines of the Great Room, but in a smaller, more secluded, less formal chamber. A large window took up most of one wall, providing a very clear view of the city and the chaos that had engulfed it.

There was a table just inside the door, with a saddle-chair in front of it. Plainly that was meant for her. She took her place warily. Three beings sat behind the table, and a fourth stood.

This was no Council of Determination, but she could see at once she was on trial all the same. She sat before three high-ranking Operations Managers from the Bureaucracy of Order, all of them known to her. Also there, for some reason, was Bulwark of Constancy. The Unseen People were not supposed to have any formal role in strictly Metrannan affairs. This was a remarkably overt intrusion into an extremely delicate area. Taranarak could think of a half dozen reasons why Constancy might have been allowed in. None of them were good. All of them suggested that this meeting was to be secret. And secrecy might not be the best thing for Tananarak's health.

"Let us begin. The riots started two days ago," Operations Manager Yalananav said wearily, barely looking up at her. "That is to say, shortly after the rumors reached the general population. Prior to that, the stories had been confined to the scientific and administrative communities. Over the objections of Bulwark of Constancy," he went on, "we of the General Operations group felt that, despite the antisocial behavior that led to your confinement, you might have some insights that would be helpful in this circumstance."

Taranarak was silent for a full fifty heartbeats before she could bring herself to speak. "I very much regret that the second half of your statement is as unfounded as the first. I committed no antisocial act--but likewise I do not have the least idea how to curb the riots. I know nothing about them. I only learned of them from what I saw on the trip here. I have no skill or background in security matters."

"Your behavior was indeed antisocial," said Bulwark of Constancy, using tone and gesture to indicate the statement of indisputable fact, not mere opinion.

"That is not what is at issue here," said Manager Yalananav. "We have far more urgent matters to consider."

"I disagree most strongly," Constancy replied.

"In this matter, at least, I must agree with Bulwark of Constancy," said Taranarak, "though my reasons are quite different. You must have the complete facts before deciding how to proceed--not only in regard to the riots, but to longer-range and larger-scale issues. If there is any information you need, you need it now."

"While the city burns, she wishes to discuss--and rewrite history!" Bulwark of Constancy protested.

"Granted, Unseen colleague," said Operations Manager Fallogon, "but if she talks, it will not delay the security forces, and perhaps she can tell us
why
the city burns--and I wish to hear her."

"I must speak frankly then," Taranarak said, "and that might cause me to speak with less discretion and courtesy than would normally be the case. I ask your forgiveness for that in advance."
After all, what are you going to do to punish me for rudeness
? she asked to herself.
Lock me up
?

She gestured toward Bulwark of Constancy, then nodded toward her other inquisitors. "Why does the city burn? I suspect it is because both the Unseen People and our own people have lived in such quiet and stable times for so long that we have forgotten change, and we do not truly understand that change cannot be undone. Our lives are so ordered, so patterned, so sheltered, and have been for so long, that we fail to understand change to be an unalterable fact rather than some sort of nuisance that can be pushed away if it becomes too troubling."

"But nothing has changed," protested Manager Yalananav. "Yes, there was the threat of a huge shift in how we live our lives, but it did not come to pass."

"Manager Yalananav, have you noticed that everyone, including myself, speaks of the new thing, the change, in such generalities that we never identify it at all? I believe that is because we fear its power, and half hope it will not be quite so powerful if we do not speak of it openly."

"We are not superstitious savages, frightened that this thing is some monster from the Old Stories," Yalananav replied peevishly.

"No? Then why have you still not dared to speak the monster's name? Why haven't I? And why do we try to wish away the great changes by saying they did not happen? For there were
two
great changes, and you have just described them. A factor in our lives that all of us, for unnumbered generations, have firmly believed to be set, established, inalterable, was found to be none of those things. And the
knowledge
that things might change escaped from the land of bureaucrats and specialists and into the general population."

She set her four legs square on either side of her saddle-seat, laid both her pairs of arms at her side, took a deep breath, and spoke again. "I have had much time to think during my confinement. Bulwark of Constancy told me, in no uncertain term, moments before I was arrested, that 'Change is wrong.' She said we have--or had at that time--an optimum situation, and therefore any change could only be for the worse. But I have to think that the thing that ails us is absolute and rigid resistance to change.

"If two geologic zones move past each other along a fault line at a slow and steady rate, there is the occasional slight tremor, but nothing more. It is when a fault line is locked up, frozen, held rigidly in place for a long time, that stresses build up, accumulate, amplify, until the forces of movement are simply more powerful than the forces holding things in check, and everything breaks loose with unimaginable violence." She gestured out the window. "
Then
comes the massive earthquake, the tidal wave--the chaos. For how many endless, weary years have our people known all the other starfaring races live twice, three, five, twelve times as long as us? How long has the frustration of our short, short lives been simmering?"

"From before the time our history books record," Yalananav said testily. "What is your point?"

"That it is time to call things by their proper names, and to face the facts. The Metrannan race has the shortest life span of any known intelligent species. Our maximum life span is roughly half the average life span of even humans--and they are the shorter-lived of the two currently known Younger Races.
All
of the Elder Races live far, far longer. Historic records show that, in pretechnological times, our lives were a third shorter than they are now. The common and received wisdom is that everything that
could
be done to extend our life spans
had
been done. Were we even to attempt further life extension, we would at best fail, but would, more likely, kill or seriously harm those who received such treatments."

"You speak harshly of unhappy subjects, but all this is known to all of us here," said Yalananav, sounding uncomfortable.

"But it needs to be said, and accepted as the true state of affairs before we face the next and darker truth," Taranarak replied.

"Which would be what?"

"
That nearly all of it is false.
Before his death several dozen twelve-days ago, my predecessor, Learned Searcher Hallaben, did new work--I emphasize,
new
work--in the field of geriatrics that established beyond any doubt--not just reasonable doubt,
but any doubt at all
--that significant extension of life span was possible using treatments that were safe and inexpensive, and that the treatments would be beneficial even for older Metrannans, even those who had reached three-quarters of their expected life span--though not as dramatically effective as if the treatments were provided at a younger age."

"That cannot be!" Yalananav protested.

"It can be, and is true," Taranarak said. "And, I might add, since our basic technology reached its current state of maturity thousands of twelve-years ago, there was nothing preventing this discovery other than our own belief that it could not be done." Even as she spoke, she wondered if that was strictly true. It was hard, even for her, to accept the idea that even Hallaben had needed outside help in order to find the way forward. "And there is more," she went on. "Early versions of the treatment might be more complex, but it seemed likely that, in final form, in order to receive the full benefit, an individual would require only a once-only dosage that could be eaten, drunk, or even inhaled. Repeated doses would have no additional effect."