20.0

I’m telling you,” Ravi insisted, slumped, as usual at the back of the class. “Someone is firing the drive—part of the drive—every night-cycle.”

“Yeah, right.” Ansimov, it was clear, was not in the mood to be taken for a fool.

“I’m serious.”

“Sure you are.” Ansimov broke into a grin. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, Rav, but it’s not going to work.”

Professor Warren entered the room, ending the discussion.

After class, and on the way to the engineering briefing, Ravi was going to have another go at him. Before he could bring the subject up again, however, a heavy, gloved hand landed on his shoulder.

“If you’ll come with me please, Midshipman.”

Ravi found himself staring into the eyes of a ShipSec officer, an older type with iron-gray hair and a professionally neutral expression. Ravi tried valiantly to ignore the sudden lump in his throat.

“Am I under arrest?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light.

“Do you want to be?”

Conscious that half his classmates were staring at him, Ravi shook his head. The faintest of smiles flitted across the officer’s face.

“Then this way, Middy. If you would.”

The press of engineers and other trainees moved hurriedly aside, as if Ravi’s sudden trouble was contagious.

“Bound to happen,” Hiroji Menendez said, making sure Ravi could hear him. “He’s a MacLeod, after all.”

“Hey, Hiroji,” Ansimov shot back. “How’s Willem? Brig treating him well?” Ravi was gratified to hear a couple of snickers in response. He kept his eyes resolutely to the front.

The local ShipSec office was halfway around the wheel and five decks up. By the time they got there, Ravi was breathing hard. Even at full gravity, the officer was a fast walker and clearly not minded to give him a break. Determined not to show weakness, Ravi had matched him step for step, but now he was paying for it. He could feel the faint sheen of perspiration on his forehead, the quickened pace of his heart. There was more to his condition than too much exercise, however. He was about to step into a ShipSec compartment under guard. He took a deep breath and stepped through the hatch . . .

He was curled up tight on the deck, but the boot still found its way into his stomach.

“Freak!” the voice was shouting. “You don’t belong here! Get back to the lab! You’re a freak!” The boot landed again. Ravi wanted to scream in pain, but he was too busy gasping for breath.

“Get off her!” a voice roared. Older. Male. “Or I’ll jinting well kill you myself! Git!”

Ravi’s mother was looking down at him, pistol in hand. His lined face was a mixture of anger and concern.

“You okay?” he asked. Strong arms hauled Ravi to his feet.

Ravi buried his face in his mother’s chest and bawled his eyes out.

“Why won’t they leave me alone?” he cried. “I’m just as human as everyone else.” He looked up at his mother, seeking reassurance. “I am, aren’t I?” His voice was querulous. Insecure.

His mother hugged him with a bone-crushing ferocity.

“Course you are, lass . . .”

“You okay, Middy?”

The ShipSec officer was looking at him strangely. Probably because he was frozen in place, one foot on either side of the hatch.

“Yes,” Ravi replied, his voice shaky. He passed across the threshold. “Totally.”

With a raised eyebrow, the officer escorted him past the reception counter and into a tiny office. There was just enough room for a desk and two chairs. The fact that one of those chairs was already occupied only increased his sense of foreboding.

“Good afternoon, Middy. Sit. Please.”

Commander-Inspector Vasconcelos was all smiles. According to Boz, that was never a good sign.

Trying to keep his knees from buckling, Ravi did as he was told.

“Thank you for coming,” Vasconcelos said graciously. “I know you’re very busy.”

Ravi shot a surprised glance in the direction of the now-departed ShipSec officer.

I didn’t think I had a choice.

He didn’t have the nerve, however, to say it out loud. Vasconcelos, meanwhile, was giving him an appraising look.

“So, Midshipman MacLeod, how is the training going?”

“Okay, I guess.”

The inspector allowed himself a small chuckle.

“There’s no need to be modest, Middy. I’m told your training is going very well, indeed.”

“That’s news to me, sir. But I’m happy to hear it.”

In other circumstances, Vasconcelos’s words would have given him a jolt of pride. But this was ShipSec. He wanted desperately to be somewhere—anywhere—else. The office walls were completely bare. There were no murals or posters or any form of decoration. Apart from the usual vents and air filters, there was nothing to occupy the eye. One of the filters was making a faint fluttering sound. A sure sign it was about to fail. Maybe that was why the air seemed to be stuffy and pressing in on him. Or maybe it was his imagination.

“You’re on track to graduate with your class in . . . what?” Vasconcelos asked. “Another hundred and eighty sols?”

“Yes, sir.”

The inspector’s smile acquired a slightly harder edge.

“And I imagine you’d like to stay on that track?”

Ravi stiffened in his seat.

“Sir?”

Contrary to regulations and common sense, Vasconcelos’s chair was not bolted down or attached to the deck in any way. This did, however, allow him to tip it backward on two legs until it was leaning against the wall. He stared affectedly at the ceiling, as if talking to himself rather than a half-terrified midshipman.

“The Chief Navigator tells me that you and Midshipman Ibori are peddling some rogue-planet story about the drive firing in the middle of the night-cycle.”

Ravi’s heart thudded in his throat. Did ShipSec know about the trip to the engine rooms? Was he about to get thrown off the program? Or worse? The tininess of the room was no coincidence, he realized. The bareness of the walls not an accident. The cramped space was oppressive, designed to throw him off balance, to bend him to Vasconcelos’s will. And it was working.

What would Boz do? Ravi asked himself. And then, chillingly: What would my dad have done?

“You’re not caught till you’re caught, son. Don’t help ’em get you there.”

He stared straight ahead and said nothing.

A dry chuckle escaped from the inspector’s lips.

“A MacLeod to the core, I see. Your family should have a cell block named after it.” The smile vanished from his face. “Non-cooperation with a ShipSec inquiry is grounds enough to get you thrown off the program,” he snapped. The chair tipped forward under his weight, the front legs landing on the deck with a metallic crash that made Ravi jump. “Have you or have you not been telling people the drive is firing at night-cycle?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because it is.”

“And how do you know that?”

Ravi hesitated, unsure of what Sofia might have already said. If she’d told them about the engine rooms, he was done anyway. But if she hadn’t . . . Well, either way, he wasn’t going to do the inspector’s work for him.

“The drive fired night-cycle before last while I was in a lo-grav area,” he said. “It had a noticeable effect. I checked out a nearby gravity meter, which showed we were accelerating. Slowly, to be sure, but the only thing capable of moving the ship like that would be the drive.”

It was, strictly speaking, almost true.

Vasconcelos was looking at him from under hooded eyes.

“You are to cease and desist from this nonsense with immediate effect,” he said brusquely. “The drive isn’t firing. And if anyone tells you otherwise, you are to deny it. Understood?”

“The drive is firing,” Ravi heard himself say. The words were cold, and deliberate, and felt like they were coming from someone else. His more usual self was already starting to panic again, the urge to jump up and flee almost overwhelming. But he forced himself to see it through. “Why are you asking me to lie?”

Vasconcelos looked genuinely angry. He leaned across the desk until his face was mere centimeters from Ravi’s.

“Just do what you’re told,” he snapped. In that moment, that close, he looked just like Ravi’s father.

“Or what?” Ravi snapped back, the MacLeod temper surfacing at long last. “Telling the truth isn’t a crime, and you can’t order me to lie . . . sir. The drive is firing. The gravity meter logs will prove the drive is firing. And if I want to tell people the drive is firing, there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Vasconcelos sat back with a short, barking laugh.

“A truth-loving MacLeod? That’s a new one.” He took a deep breath and stared at the wall behind Ravi’s shoulder, as if looking for inspiration. When he spoke again his voice was icy calm. “Take a look at this.”

Ravi’s eyelid twitched under the impact of a data packet. It was short and easy to read.

SHIP’S SECURITY: ISV-1 ARCHIMEDES

SUMMARY COVER SHEET

CREWMAN 6-7864 MACLEOD, ROBERTA J.

MOST RECENT CHARGES: CONDITIONALLY SUSPENDED

SHIP’S STANDING: SATISFACTORY (PROVISIONAL)

As Ravi watched, however, the last two lines changed.

MOST RECENT CHARGES: VIOLATION OF SHIPS REG 3-111(a) ET SEQ.

SHIPS’S STANDING: DEAD WEIGHT

“You can’t do that!”

“Actually, I can. Your cousin’s status is entirely at my discretion. The Chief Navigator would like to keep her around for her, ah, skills, but I can rescind her status at any time. And believe me, if you think the consequences of Dead Weight are going to be waived in her case, think again. Unless, of course . . .”

He paused delicately.

“Fine,” Ravi mumbled. “No more talking about the drive.”

He got up and left the office before he could punch the smile off of Vasconcelos’s face.

“He said what?”

Boz looked horrified. Her hands, Ravi noted with alarm, had started to shake. So would his, he thought, if a trip to the recycler depended on the whims of the Chief of Ship’s Security. The glowing tip of her cigarette jittered frantically back and forth. So much so, Ravi thought, it might actually fly out of her fingers. To guard against the possibility, she jammed it back in her mouth. Ravi tried not to cough. The air filters were on their last legs. Even without the cigarette smoke, the atmosphere in the abandoned control room, high up in Fiji, had become dangerously stuffy. The air reeked of damp.

“Point is,” he said, trying to calm her down, “no one is going to do anything. Vasconcelos wanted me to shut up about the drive: I’m going to shut up about the drive. Case closed.”

“Are you kidding?” The cigarette in Boz’s mouth muffled her words but not her incredulity. “This is Vasconcelos we’re talking about. Soon as this probe project is done with, he’s going to have me mulched.”

“I don’t think he can do that,” Ravi said, but without much conviction. And then, more firmly: “I’m sure he can’t do that. It’s has to be against regs. Has to.”

“Yeah, well, if you were a ship’s barrister, I might believe you,” Boz said cynically. “But as you’re not . . .”

She let the words trail off, the silence pregnant with despair.

“We could get a barrister’s opinion,” Ravi suggested. “At least we’d know where we stand. We shouldn’t let that bescumbered gullgroper push us around without a fight.”

“Who has the water for a barrister?” She shot him a weary smile. “We’d need enough to fill that dream bath of yours.”

“I thought barristers were free.”

Boz just laughed at him.

“Ship pays for your defense if you’re charged with a crime.” She took the cigarette from her mouth and blew out a long plume of smoke. “Otherwise, you’re on your own.”

A sudden, sour taste filled Ravi’s mouth. Not because of the problem. Because of the solution.

“Sofia’s . . .” He could barely say it. “Sofia’s boyfriend is a ship’s barrister.”

“Jaden?”

Ravi nodded.

“Sofia owes me. Maybe she can persuade him to do us a favor.”

“Maybe,” Boz agreed. She brightened a little. “Jaden’s full of himself, but he knows what he’s doing. He got my last set of charges dismissed.” A small smile crossed her face. “You know, for a Strauss-Cohen, he really has it in for the authorities.”

“Probably because he’s a BonVoy,” Ravi said dourly.

Boz must have thought he was joking until she caught sight of his expression.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” He told her about the BonVoy demonstration in the hubs, his encounter with the masked Jaden.

Boz shook her head in wonder.

“That,” she said, “would explain a lot. The Captain must be horrified . . . Unless she’s one as well.”

Ravi had to smile at that.

“You know what’s bugging me?” Boz went on. “The fact that this whole drive thing is a secret. Why? Why bother? There’s got to be a dozen really good reasons for firing the drive, so why all the shielding?”

“The Destination Star is filthy with dust and meteoroids,” Ravi agreed, remembering what Sofia had told him. “Maybe it’s just a minor course adjustment?”

“Or not. No one gets madder than when they’re caught doing something wrong, you know. Officers are no different. And the way you tell it, Vasconcelos was mad as hungary.” She pointed the glowing tip of her cigarette at him. “You mark my words, Rav: whatever they’re firing the drive for, we’re not going to like it.”

Boz’s suspicions rolled around the inside of Ravi’s skull long after he’d made it back to his quarters, pulled his bunk out of the wall, and killed the lights. He didn’t remember his dreams when he awoke the next morning. But he was certain they hadn’t been happy ones.

Ravi and Sofia stood awkwardly under the large tree at the center of the arboretum, waiting for the fake Home Star to go away. As it turned out, only Ravi had been interrogated by ShipSec. Sofia had had a pleasant meal with her great-uncle, the Chief Navigator, who had suggested that it would be better if the subject of the drive were not raised again. The Captain had her reasons, apparently. Sofia had agreed.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she’d said, when Ravi had challenged her about it. “If they don’t want me talking about it, what’s it to me—or to you, for that matter?”

Ravi didn’t have a good answer to that.

The fake Homeworld sky was starting to darken.

“He’s late,” Ravi muttered.

“No, he’s not.” Sofia pointed toward the nearest entrance, her eyes sparkling.

Jaden Strauss-Cohen was striding confidently in their direction, his luxurious hair hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, clearly modeled after the ones people wore in the old-time Westerns. Ravi was even more jealous than usual. The hat, which protected Jaden’s eyes from the searing rays of the arboretum’s day-cycle starlight, probably cost a river’s worth of water. Way more than Ravi could afford, anyway. And that was just the beginning. Nothing Jaden was wearing was standard. And nothing he was wearing was cheap. Ravi glanced down at his fatigues and sighed. Even Boz had her blood-curdling leather jacket. All he had was a collection of ship’s-issue fatigues, mostly scuffed at the knees, and a couple of sweaters, both scuffed at the elbows. He picked distractedly at a piece of lint. As if removing it would make his clothing suddenly elegant . . .

It was hard to ignore the tight knot of officers in the corner of the lab, but he did his best.

Take the cake, he suggested. You know you want it, and it tastes so good.

On the other side of the workbench, the boy was staring at the slice of cake, his scalp dotted with electrodes, his expression conflicted. He shook his head, but there was no force in it.

C’mon, it’s cake. It’s delicious. What if they take it away and you never get to taste it?

Impulsively, the boy grabbed for the cake. The moment he touched the plate, he yelped and swore as a tiny jolt of electricity zapped his hand away.

“Incredible,” one of the officers said. “And she’s the only one of them who can do this?”

“Yes, sir.” An unseen voice from behind him. “With a subject like this, fully mapped, she has a ninety-three percent success rate. Even though he knows he’s going to get zapped, he can’t stop himself reaching out.”

The boy nodded in rueful agreement.

The officer strode over to the workbench and leaned onto it with widespread arms. He looked Ravi in the eyes, his expression one of naked curiosity.

“You, young lady, are going to help us kill our enemies. How do you feel about that?”

“I’m eager to do my duty, sir.”

But he wasn’t eager. Not even a little bit . . .

“Jaden!” Sofia cried, running over to him. “So glad you could make it!” She led him excitedly by the hand until he was standing next to Ravi under the broad boughs of the tree.

Jaden, for his part, looked slightly bored.

“Sofe tells me your cousin’s in trouble with ShipSec. Again.” He sounded more amused than anything else. The fact that Boz was a wave of the hand from getting mulched didn’t seem to be bothering him at all.

Disoriented as he was, Ravi didn’t have enough bandwidth to be annoyed.

“We just want to know where we stand,” he said, groping his way back to reality.

Jaden stretched out on the ground, back against the tree trunk, pulling Sofia down with him. She followed him with fluid grace, happy to be kept close. Ravi stayed standing, staring into the distance and waiting for an answer. Tiny Seventh Gen children were playing on a nearby stretch of meadow. He closed his ears to their shrieks of laughter.

“If I’ve understood what Sofe told me correctly,” Jaden said languidly, “Roberta’s been given the benefit of a provisional reclassification. Senior officers have the discretion to do that if it’s in the ship’s interest. Usually, there’s some sort of quid pro quo. Do something for the ship, and you get reclassified to a higher grade.” He played idly with Sofia’s hair, stroking it with long fingers. “If that’s right, Commander-Inspector Vasconcelos can’t just reclassify Roberta back down to Dead Weight and send her to the recycler. There has to be a hearing. And Vasconcelos would have to satisfy the ombudsman that Roberta had failed to keep her end of the bargain.” He looked up at Ravi and grinned. “So, so long as your cousin does what Sofia’s uncle wants, she’s golden.”

There had been a tightness about his chest Ravi realized, because it lessened a little at Jaden’s words. But only a little. They were talking about Boz, after all.

“But what if—ow!”

He’d been going to ask what happened if Boz didn’t do as she was told, or if the Chief Navigator and Vasconcelos simply lied about her work. But he was rubbing his head instead.

The tree had dropped a fruit on his head. The offending object, already bruised from its encounter with his skull, rolled to a stop at his feet.

“Are you okay?” Sofia asked, not bothering to stifle a laugh.

“Yeah,” Ravi said ruefully. “It did hurt, though.”

“Now I know what Newton looked like when he was hit on the head with an apple,” Jaden joked.

The girl was sitting under a tree. An apple fell from the fruited leaves, dropping softly into the girl’s hand. The girl laughed and rolled the apple onto the poisoned lawn . . .

“Are you okay?” It was Sofia again. But this time with a hint of worry.

Ravi forced himself back to the real world.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. He gave her a weak smile before turning his attention to Jaden. “What’s Newton got to do with apples?”

Jaden raised an eyebrow, as if surprised by the question.

“Newton’s theory of gravity, silly,” Sofia said, before Jaden could answer. “The story is that he got the idea when he was hit on the head by a falling apple. Just like you.”

Sofia kept talking, but Ravi wasn’t really listening. He wasn’t much for history or stories, but he’d heard of Isaac Newton. Ancient physicist, and inventor of many of the equations that Ravi had wrestled with at school—and which the navigators used to steer the ship. Quietly, so as not to appear rude, he reached out into the hive.

Isaac Newton, born Earth Year 1643 CE in the British Isles, just off the coast of Europe. Died, same place, EY 1727 CE. Pictures, or rather old-style drawings, of Isaac Newton flooded his head. A narrow, harshly chiseled chin that changed little as he aged. Intense, staring eyes that changed not at all. Eyes that, as often as not, stared out at him from beneath an enormous white wig.

The man from his dreams.