KENNETH STOOD UP.
"And we can stop it."
He didn't wait for Hensen to respond. He said to the giant in white, "Call your robots. It's time we throw some people outside."
Unquill's eyes widened. "Surely you would not-not representatives of the council. I mean, no one would."
Kenneth grunted. "If they don't want to be thrown outside, we'll lock them up. We'll steal their ship and head for the council ourselves. Ships like this, they have some weapons on them, don't they?"
Unquill said, "Well yes, but, please, you must understand." He gestured with his hands, becoming more animated. "No one has stolen anything since the establishment of future history. It just isn't done. The punishment for such behavior is exile. No one has been exiled as a punishment, though. It would mean leaving Earth-leaving the world behind."
Kenneth shrugged.
He stood up, his eyes bearing a steely resolve.
No one had ever seen this side of him before.
Savannah stood up with him.
"We might be the first. Either way, I don't care. This has gone on long enough. The council is full of shit. The Constabulary is full of shit. As far as I can see, everyone in this damned future doesn't know what they're doing. I'm going to show them, by force if I have to."
Savannah glanced at him, then nodded. "Okay, I'm with you. Let's call the robots."
Hensen Var, only too pleased to hear this request, called the robots.
They arrived as one of the room's four walls opened as it had before. This time, four robots came, instead of just two. Each robot carried a blue triangle-shaped weapon on a forearm. They stood in silence, awaiting Hensen's orders.
Hensen made no motion to command them.
Kenneth stepped forward. "You will follow my instructions now," he suddenly commanded.
He was no longer an insecure, sarcastic, self-conscious teenager. Standing in place of his former self was a young man who knew what he needed to do to ensure the right outcome.
The robots didn't respond right away.
Kenneth thought they would shoot him on the spot.
Red lights flashed in eye sockets.
Each one had trained a weapon upon him.
He deduced, by the robots' continual threat of being thrown outside, that the weapons stunned instead of killed.
He didn't know how he might have reacted with the threat of being vaporized. As it was, he stood his ground before the robots while they worked out various calculations for themselves.
For several interminable seconds no one spoke or moved.
Then one of them spoke.
"New supervisor. Please confirm."
Kenneth breathed an audible sigh of relief.
Hensen said to the robots, "The order is confirmed."
"The order has been processed. New supervisor accepted. State your name for the record."
"Kenneth Yardrow is my name."
"Supervisor Kenneth Yardrow, state your orders."
Kenneth cracked his knuckles together. Savannah winced to hear it. "Intruders have come. Detain them."
"Your orders have been recognized. Detain all intruders."
"Executing orders," replied the other three robots in unison.
The robots departed with heavy footsteps.
Kenneth took heavy breaths.
If Hensen was right, he could change the future.
He didn't feel it necessary to mention that, if he could change his own future, he wouldn't have to marry Savannah. He had really balked at that suggestion. Now, looking at her with her arms crossed over her chest as if in protective mode, he wasn't so certain.
For a moment, he saw the possibility.
He saw marriage as something he could really do, if only to show his parents that he wouldn't make such a mess of it as they had done.
He could see it, and it both surprised and frightened him. In that moment, he had an idea of what it must be like to know everything about the future.
He couldn't imagine anyone in the future as being happy.
Not truly.
THE SHIP DEPARTED from the council building at 3:45 in the afternoon, local time.
The ship, a moderately sized bullet-shaped collection of metal, paced along using the power of its solar fusion engines. It was one of the few ships on the planet that could move anywhere without the assistance of a Soonseen skyrail.
The ship, called Yesterday, had been in service for seventy-one years. During that time, it had spent a two-year long voyage to Saturn and back. Yesterday had been on hand when the last citizens of the terra-formed moon had been evacuated. That had been called E-Day, a day lamented as humanity's failure to reach out to the stars.
Since then, the ship had sat in the lower hangars of the council building, a monument to better days.
It sat there until a citizen of no particular importance whatever had become the most wanted man on the planet.
Four members of the Black Brigade had been informed of their duty: to capture an enemy of humanity.
None of them had been tasked with a such a mission before.
Not Jinna Thurman, the female navigator who monitored their altitude while making sure the ship stayed on course.
Not Odro Konna, the senior member of the Black Brigade, at an improbable six hundred and thirteen years old, ivory-white hair falling about his shoulders, wrinkles all over his face.
Not Sixen Lolon, the weapons officer of the mission who, while being the youngest member of the Black Brigade, also happened to be the most experienced in the use of weapons, for he had always volunteered to test out new firearms in the process of development.
Not even the leader of the mission, Winnow Unpo, had ever been tasked with capturing an enemy of humanity before. His previous mission of escorting a Soonseen ambassador to meet with the Council of Thirds had been an exercise in boredom compared to the one he now sought to fulfill.
Jinna, a hair tie between her teeth, pulled part of her blonde hair back into a ponytail and fixed her hair in place. Errant strands fell over the sides of her head. She rolled her shoulders forwards and backwards a few times, trying to loosen the knots that had formed there over the course of their voyage.
She had been in the middle of a rest period when an order had come down to mobilize at once. Such was life in the Black Brigade-sleep, however restful, could be interrupted at a moment's notice if a superior officer deemed it necessary, as they often did.
She said to everyone in the ship's cockpit, "I'll be glad when all this is over. I'm tired as an alligator."
Odro flashed her his usual smile full of artificial white teeth. As was his habit, he'd strapped himself in his seat for the duration of his voyage, still refusing to trust any craft in sky or space after a malfunction had caused a ship to enter free fall in the atmosphere while he stood before a vacuum toilet, his fly open. He spoke in a raspy voice. "Did any of you receive personal briefings on citizen Hester? I found myself curious as to why the council should take such an interest in him all of a sudden, then keep that information to themselves."
Sixen, combing his black hair while looking at his reflection in a window, made a noise of dismissal. He'd never looked too closely at the backgrounds of the people designated for arrest, since the council, due to the work of the Temporal Constabulary, had all the information they needed at their fingertips. He had never known them to be wrong, not even when they arrested one of their own for accepting bribes. He felt that, while the circumstances proved more unusual than normal, the council couldn't have gone wrong in their decision.
He said to Odro, "Let it be. Things will work out as they always do."
Winnow Unpo, controlling the ship by means of a gear shift on his left-hand side, wasn't so sure. Even when he had yawned into his hand while escorting the ambassador, he'd never felt perfectly safe. He'd always felt, as the council suspected, that a group of people drew up plans in secret to overturn society as he knew it. He couldn't put a name or a face to any person involved in such plans, nor could he even prove that they existed.
Yet, he remembered being told, upon receiving the striped shirt designating his office and rank, that the most dangerous people to any society were those who refused to conform.
The advice had been given to him in an offhand manner, as though the person giving it hadn't really expected Winnow to listen.
Winnow had listened.
More importantly, he had remembered.
"Such a sudden event," Winnow said, his eyes focused on the heat shimmer in front of him that represented his destination. "It must mean the council itself is threatened. Or, something even worse than that."
"It's all right," Sixen said. "Anyhow, we just need to capture one man. What can one man do?"
Jinna Thurman bit her lower lip.
She knew very well what one man could do, having seen it for herself first hand.
At the age of thirty-three, when she had first entered tertiary school, she had observed for herself the sensation Tinbar Ross had made when the Constabulary had announced his dismissal.
Ross had always been a playful one, and, in his mischief, he had let everyone in on his biggest secret: he had been dismissed because he had entered the next stage of human evolution.
The theory put forth by Dr. Kifsky had been shocking enough. The admission, by one of the world's most respected citizens, that such a transformation was entirely practicable, had set the world on its ear for days on end.
Because of Ross, she still had doubts about her own nature.
Was she, in fact, what her ancestors would have called human?
Had the word human come to mean something other than what it had originally meant?
She could not answer to this to her satisfaction.
"He escaped us once at Central Station. He could escape us again, if we're not careful."
Odro laughed. He produced a jovial, heartwarming sound that relaxed everyone in the cockpit, including himself.
"Maybe you're right," he said to Jinna. "Or maybe you're right, Sixen. Either way, I have a feeling that this mission is going to get us sleep privileges for a full month, don't you?"
On that point, no one disagreed.