The Ghost Brigades (18 page)

Silence.

“You didn't,” the hierarch said, pleading.

“We did,” Sagan said.

The hierarch rubbed her mouthpieces together, creating an unworldly keening noise. She was crying. She got up from her seat, out of frame, keening, and then suddenly reappeared, too close to the camera. “You are monsters!” the hierarch screamed. Sagan said nothing.

The Consecration of the Heir cannot be undone. A sterile heir means the death of a hierarchical line. The death of a hierarchical line means years of unyielding and bloody civil war as tribes compete to found a new line. If the tribes knew an heir was sterile, they would not wait for the natural span of the heir's life to begin their internecine warfare. First the sitting hierarch would be assassinated, to bring the sterile heir to power. Then she would be a constant assassination target as well. When power is within reach, few will wait patiently for it.

By making Vyut Ser sterile, the Colonial Union had sentenced the Ser hierarchical line to oblivion and the Enesha to anarchy. Unless the hierarch gave in to their demands and consented to something unspeakable. And the hierarch knew it.

She fought it anyway. “I will not allow you to choose my consort,” the hierarch said.

“We will inform the matriarchs your daughter is sterile,” Sagan said.

“I will destroy your transport where it sits, and my daughter with you,” the hierarch screamed.

“Do it,” Sagan said. “And all the matriarchs will know that your incompetence as hierarch led us to attack you and caused the death of your consort and your heir. And then you may find that while you may
choose
a tribe to provide you with a consort, the tribe itself may not agree to provide one. No consort, no heir. No heir, no peace. We know Eneshan history, Hierarch. We know the tribes have withheld consorts for less, and that those boycotted hierarchs didn't last long after that.”

“It won't happen,” the hierarch said.

Sagan shrugged. “Kill us, then,” she said. “Or refuse our demands, and we'll give you back your sterile daughter. Or do it our way and have our cooperation in extending your hierarchical line and keeping your nation from civil war. These are your choices. And your time is almost up.”

Jared watched emotions play the hierarch's face and body, strange because of their alien nature but no less powerful for that. It was a quiet and heartrending struggle. Jared was reminded that at the briefing for the mission Sagan said that humans couldn't break the Eneshans militarily; they had to break them psychologically. Jared watched as the hierarch bent and bent and bent and then broke.

“Tell me who I am to seize upon,” the hierarch said.

“Hu Geln,” Sagan said.

The hierarch turned to look at Hu Glen, standing quietly in the background, and gave the Eneshan equivalent of a bitter laugh. “I am not surprised,” she said.

“He is a good man,” Sagan said. “And he will counsel you well.”

“Try to console me again, human,” the hierarch said, “and I will send us all into war.”

“My apologies, Hierarch,” Sagan said. “Do we have agreement?”

“Yes,” the hierarch said, and began her keening again. “Oh, God,” she cried. “Oh, Vyut. Oh, God.”

“You know what you have to do,” Sagan said.

“I can't. I can't,” the hierarch cried. At the sound of the cries, Vyut Ser, who had been silent, stirred and cried for her mother. The hierarch broke anew.

“You have to,” Sagan said.

“Please,” the most powerful creature on the planet begged. “I can't. Please. Please, human. Please help me.”

::Dirac,:: Sagan said. ::Do it.::

Jared unsheathed his combat knife and approached the thing that Sarah Pauling had died for. She was strapped to a gurney and she wriggled and cried for her mother, and she would die alone and frightened, and far away from anyone that ever loved her.

Jared broke too. He did not know why.

Jane Sagan walked over to Jared and took his knife and raised it. Jared turned away.

The crying stopped.

It was the black jellybeans that did it.

Jared saw them as he was browsing at a Phoenix Station commissary candy stand, and passed them over, more interested in the chocolates. But his eye kept going back to them, a small container segregated out from the rest of the jellybeans, which were in a mixed assortment.

“Why do you do that?” Jared asked the vendor, after his eyes tracked back to the black jellybeans for the fifth time. “What makes the black jellybeans so special?”

“People either love 'em or hate 'em,” the vendor said. “The people who hate 'em—that's most people—don't like having to pick them out of the rest of the jellybeans. The people who love 'em like to have their own little bag of 'em. So I keep some on hand but in their own space.”

“Which sort are you?” Jared asked.

“I can't stand them,” the vendor said. “But my husband can't get enough. And he'll breathe on me while he's eating them, just to annoy me. I kicked him right off the bed, once, for doing that. You've never had a black jellybean?”

“No,” Jared said. His mouth was watering slightly. “But I think I'll try some.”

“Brave man,” the vendor said, and filled a small clear plastic bag with the candies to hand to Jared. Jared took it and fished out two jellybeans while the vendor rang up the order; being in the CDF, Jared didn't pay for the jellybeans (they, like everything else, were gratis on what CDF soldiers lovingly referred to as their all-inclusive package tour of hell), but vendors kept track of what they sold to soldiers and billed the CDF accordingly. Capitalism had made it to space and was doing reasonably well.

Jared took the pair of jellybeans and popped them into his mouth, crushed them with his molars and then held them there as his saliva suffused the licorice flavor over his tongue, vapors of its scent moving beyond his palate and expanding in his sinus cavity. His eyes closed, and he realized that they were just as he remembered. He took a handful and crammed them into his mouth.

“How are they?” the vendor said, watching the enthusiastic consumption.

“They're good,” Jared said, between jellybeans. “Really good.”

“I'll tell my husband there's another on his team,” the vendor said.

Jared nodded. “Two,” he said. “My little girl loves them too.”

“Even better,” the vendor said, but by this time Jared had stepped away, lost in thought, heading back toward his office. Jared took ten steps, completely swallowed the mass of jellybeans in his mouth, reached to get more and stopped.

My little girl,
he thought, and was hit with a thick knot of grief and memory that made him convulse, gag and vomit his jellybeans on the level walkway. As he coughed the last fragment of the candies from his throat, a name formed in his head.

Zoë
, Jared thought.
My daughter. My daughter who is dead
.

A hand touched his shoulder. Jared recoiled, almost slipping on the vomit as he twisted away, bag of jellybeans flying from his hand. He looked at the woman who had touched him, a CDF soldier of some sort. She looked at him strangely and then there was a short, sharp buzz in his head like a human voice accelerated to ten times speed. It happened again and once more, like two slaps on the inside of his head.

“What?” Jared yelled at the woman.

“Dirac,” she said. “Calm down. Tell me what's wrong.”

Jared felt disoriented fear and quickly stepped away from the solider, clipping other pedestrians as he heaved away.

Jane Sagan watched Dirac stumble away and then looked down at the dark splash of vomit and the splay of jellybeans on the floor. She looked back toward the candy stand and stalked over.

“You,” she said, pointing to the vendor. “Tell me what happened.”

“The guy came over and bought some black jellybeans,” the vendor said. “Said he loved them and shoved a bunch into his mouth. Then he takes a couple of steps and throws up.”

“That's it,” Sagan said.

“That's it,” the vendor said. “I made small talk about how my husband likes black jellybeans, he said his kid likes them too, he took the jellybeans and he walked off.”

“He talked about his kid,” Sagan said.

“Yeah,” the vendor said. “He said he had a little girl.”

Sagan looked down the walkway. There was no sign of Dirac. She starting running in the direction she last saw him going and tried to open a channel to General Szilard.

 

Jared reached a station lift as others were exiting, jabbed the button for his lab's level and suddenly realized his arm was green. He retracted it with such violence that it smacked hard against the lift wall, bringing into sharp, painful focus that it was, in fact, his arm, and that he wasn't going to get away from it. The other people in the lift looked at him strangely, and in one case with actual venom; he'd almost hit a woman when he drew back his arm.

“Sorry,” he said. The woman snorted and performed the forward-looking elevator stare. Jared did the same and saw a smeary reflection of his green self in the brushed metal walls of the lift. Jared's confused anxiety by this point was peaking toward terror, but one thing he did know was that he didn't want to lose his shit in an elevator filled with strangers. Social conditioning was, for the moment, stronger than panic over confused identity.

If Jared were to have taken a moment to question who he was, standing there silently in the lift and waiting for his level, he would have come to the startled realization that he wasn't exactly sure. But he hadn't; on a day-to-day basis people don't question their identity. Jared knew that being green wasn't right, his lab was three levels down from where he was, and that his daughter Zoë was dead.

The lift reached Jared's level; he stepped out to a wide hallway. This level of Phoenix Station had no candy stands or commissaries; it was one of the two levels of the station given over primarily to military research. CDF soldiers stood every hundred feet or so, monitoring hallways that led deeper into the level. Each hallway was fronted by biometric and BrainPal/brain prosthesis scanners that scanned every individual who approached. If that person was not allowed down the hallway, the CDF guard would intercept them before they made it to the hallway itself.

Jared knew that he was supposed to have access to most of these hallways, but doubted that this strange body would have clearance for any of them. He set down the hall, walking as if he had a purpose, toward the hallway he knew held his lab and his office. Maybe by the time he got there he'd figure out what to do next. He was almost there when he saw every CDF guard in front of him in the hallway turn and look at him.

Crap,
Jared thought. His hallway was less than fifty feet away. On impulse he sprinted toward it and was surprised at how fast his body took off toward his goal. So was the soldier guarding it; he whipped up his Empee but by the time it was up Jared was on him. Jared shoved the soldier, hard. The soldier bounced off the hallway wall and fell. Jared sprinted past him without breaking his stride and ran to his lab door, two hundred feet down the corridor. As Jared ran, sirens blared and emergency doors slammed shut; Jared barely passed the threshold of the one that would have separated him from his goal when it shot out from the corridor sides, sealing the section in less than half a second.

Jared reached the door to his lab and thrust it open. Inside were a CDF military research technician and a Rraey. Jared was struck immobile by the cognitive dissonance of having a Rraey in his lab, and through the confusion came a knife-like frisson of fear, not of the Rraey, but from having been caught doing something dangerous and terrible and punishable. Jared's brain surged, looking for a memory or explanation to attach to the fear, but arrived at nothing.

The Rraey wiggled its head and came around the desk at which it had been standing, and moved toward Jared.

“You're him, aren't you?” the Rraey said, in strangely pronounced but recognizable English.

“Who?” Jared asked.

“The soldier they made to trap a traitor,” the Rraey said. “But they couldn't do it.”

“I don't understand you,” Jared said. “This is my lab. Who are you?”

The Rraey wiggled its head again. “Or maybe they did, after all,” the Rraey said. It pointed to itself. “Cainen. Scientist and prisoner. Now you know who I am. Do you know who
you
are?”

Jared opened his mouth to answer and realized he did not know who he was. He stood there dumb and openmouthed until the emergency doors flew open a few seconds later. The woman soldier he had talked to earlier stepped through, raised a pistol, and shot him in the head.

::First question,:: General Szilard said. Jared lay in the Phoenix Station infirmary, recovering from his stun bolt, with two CDF guards stationed at the foot of his bed and Jane Sagan standing by the wall. ::Who are you?::

::I'm Private Jared Dirac,:: Jared said. He did not ask who Szilard was; his BrainPal ID'd him as he entered the room. Szilard's own BrainPal could have as easily ID'd Jared, so the question wasn't a matter of mere identification. ::I'm stationed on the
Kite
. My commanding officer is Lieutenant Sagan, who is over there.::

::Second question,:: General Szilard said. ::Do you know who Charles Boutin is?::

::No, sir,:: Jared said. ::Should I?::

::Possibly,:: Szilard said. ::It was his lab we found you standing in front of. It was his lab that you told that Rraey was yours. Which suggests that you thought you
were
Charles Boutin, at least for a minute. And Lieutenant Sagan tells me that you wouldn't respond to your name when she tried to talk to you.::

::I remember not knowing that I was me,:: Jared said. ::But I don't remember thinking I was anyone else.::

::But you got to Boutin's lab without ever having been there before,:: Szilard said. ::And we know you didn't access your BrainPal for a station map in order to find it.::

::I can't explain it,:: Jared said. ::The memory of it was just in my head.:: Jared saw Szilard glance over at Sagan at that.

The door opened and two men walked through. One of the men stalked over to Jared before his BrainPal could identify him.

“Do you know who I am?” he said.

Jared's punch sent the man to the floor. The guards raised their Empees; Jared, already coming down from his sudden surge of rage and adrenaline, immediately put his hands up.

The man stood up as Jared's BrainPal finally identified him as General Greg Mattson, head of Military Research.

“That answers
that,
” Mattson said, holding his hand to his right eye. He stalked off toward the room's lavatory, to check out the damage.

“Don't be so sure,” Szilard said. He turned to Jared. “Private, do you know the man you just struck?”

“I know now he's General Mattson,” Jared said. “But I didn't know that when I struck him.”

“Why did you strike him?” Szilard asked.

“I don't know, sir,” Jared said. “It just…” He stopped.

“Answer the question, Private,” Szilard said.

“It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time,” Jared said. “I can't explain why.”

“He's definitely remembering some things,” Szilard said, turning to Mattson. “But he's not remembering it all. And he doesn't remember who he was.”

“Crap,” Mattson said, from the lavatory. “He remembered enough to punch me in the head. That son of a bitch has been waiting to do that for years.”

“He could be remembering it all and trying to convince you that he doesn't, General,” the other man said to Szilard. Jared's BrainPal identified him as Colonel James Robbins.

“It's possible,” Szilard said. “But his actions so far don't seem to suggest it. If he really were Boutin, it wouldn't be in his interest to let us know he remembered anything at all. Punching out the general wouldn't have been very smart.”

“Not smart,” Mattson said, coming out of the lavatory. “Just cathartic.” He turned to Jared and pointed to his eye, ringed in gray where the SmartBlood had been smashed out of blood vessels, causing a bruise. “Back on Earth, you'd have hung this shiner on me for a couple of weeks. I should have you shot just on principle.”

“General,” Szilard began.

“Relax, Szi,” Mattson said. “I buy your theory. Boutin wouldn't be stupid enough to punch me, so this isn't Boutin. Bits of him are coming out, though, and I want to see how much we can get.”

“The war Boutin tried to start is over, General,” Jane Sagan said. “The Enesha are going to turn on the Rraey.”

“Well, that's wonderful, Lieutenant,” Mattson said. “But in this case two out of three won't do. The Obin may still be planning something, and since it looks like Boutin is with them, perhaps we shouldn't go declaring victory and calling off the search just yet. We still need to know what Boutin knows, and now that the private here has got two people rattling around in his skull, perhaps we can do a little more to encourage the other one to come out and play.” He turned to Jared. “What do you say, Private? They call you guys the Ghost Brigades, but you're the only one with a
real
ghost in your head. Want to get it out?”