Year's Best SF 11, page 36
“Why so?” Mia’s total rejection of violence always made Derek feel like a terrible beast, knowing that she would rather die than harm another thinking being, leaving her defenseless against people like Pender who wanted all Greenies killed, sight unseen. Would knowing Mia have changed Pender’s mind? Probably not.
Mia looped light green arms around his neck, her gold hair falling half across her smiling face. “You risk your life for others. You bring me presents, and you are so thoughtful.”
Too thoughtful at times. Soon Mia was going dirtside to live an ecologist’s dream, creating a balanced planetary ecosystem teeming with plants and animals. By then, Derek’s work dirtside would be done, and he would go back to being a vacuum hand. So was he merely a pleasant interlude to Mia, before the serious business of life began? A sort of in-depth xenobiology experiment? Or maybe just a pet she could fuck? Greenie women could control conception, and she was choosing not to breed by him. He cocked an eyebrow, asking, “As good as a Greenie?”
“No,” Mia laughed at the thought, “you are not like a Greenie in the least.” Undoing his tunic, she played with his chest hairs, saying, “And I like that. I like that a lot.” Leaning down, she licked the sweat off his chest with her small green tongue. Mia especially liked the taste of him, saying he was wild and salty, while Greenie sweat was designed to be bland and inoffensive. “I really love that you are human.”
“Do you?” Derek stripped the fabric off her slim light-green torso, pressing Mia’s warm body against his bare chest, knowing that this smart, dedicated mammalian ecologist would do pretty much whatever he wanted—so long as it was physiologically possible. She enthusiastically explored his favorite quirks and fantasies. Being a devoted mammalogist, Mia vastly enjoyed making love to the most fearsome mammal in the known universe, thrilling to the feel of his savage power inside her. What true scientist could resist being so intimate with her subject? He whispered, “Do you like making love to a dangerous beast?” The most dangerous beast. “Is that it?”
“A little,” Mia laughed, clearly liking how he manhandled her. Even at half his weight, her calm sure confidence came off like a challenge, begging him to puncture her smug Greenie superiority.
Taking firm hold of her buttock, Derek suggested, “Perhaps you would prefer a SuperCat?”
“Ugh, too hairy,” Mia protested, “and those horrid teeth! They are real beasts, who do not know good from evil. You know good and evil, yet you choose good. That delights me.”
Derek too. He kissed her soft acquiescent mouth, at the same time sliding out of his trousers. When he released her tongue, Mia whispered, “What is her name?”
“Who?” He kicked his pants onto the tatami deck.
Mia wiggled atop him, her groin grinding rhythmically against his. “This Earthwoman, from Portland.”
He never knew what Greenies would say next. “Her name is Tammy.”
Mia grinned, so excited by his seeing an Earthwoman she had to drag Tammy into bed with them, metaphorically at least. “Did you make love to Tammy?”
“No time.” Derek could barely believe they were discussing this. Tammy had been hard put to even talk to him; at best, he hoped to hire her to help with his job.
“You will.” Mia dismissed his protest; after all, he was only human, and a man at that. Parting her thighs, she sank down onto him, drawing him deep into her. Maybe Greenies were the same under the skin. Mia’s head might be wired wildly different, and her skin might turn sunlight into blood sugar, but, on the inside, she felt just like a woman. Or so Derek supposed—never having done this with a human female.
Portland Woman
Greenies needed no death penalty, since they never killed each other, and genocide was such a preposterous concept they had no laws against it. So the trial took place on the surface, on a lowland LZ, under military law, with Leo for a judge. The defendants were the last to leave Pender’s bunker, the trio in flight suits and Tammy, who turned out to be on Pender’s staff, an operations assistant doubling as a door-gunner. All were charged with murdering more than ten thousand Gekko civilians in a nuclear strike near the end of the fighting. The older man had piloted the strike craft, and his two teenage sons had served as weapons officer and crew chief. Tammy’s office had given the order.
Liking to work outdoors, Leo held the trial in a deep green valley floored by stands of elephant grass and tall tree ferns—a hint of what Harmonia would be like when terraforming was complete. Brightly colored birds called from atop the tree ferns. Derek refused to sit on the jury, so it was made up of SuperChimps, SuperCats, and Greenie males—since no female could vote for death. Learning that Derek would not serve on the jury, Leo asked, “Will you be defense attorney then?”
Derek shook his head. “That would be racist.” Why have him do it, just because he was human? Derek had no training as a lawyer, and no particular sympathy for Pender’s people. Nor for Gekkos, so far as that goes. Let some earnest young Greenie try to get them off.
Tammy immediately volunteered, stepping up and saying to the SuperCat, “I will defend myself and the others—if they want me.”
Prosecutors objected, claiming, “It creates conflict of interests for the defense attorney to be a co-defendant.” The prosecutors were Gekkos. Not real ones, who could not tolerate the humid oxygen-rich atmosphere of the lowlands; instead, they appeared as holograms beamed down from orbit—grim humanoid bio-constructs, stretched-out versions of Greenies with horny skin, big bald heads, and barrel chests; bred for dry, low-g, low-oxygen worlds, like Harmonia was before real humans arrived. The Gekkos suggested, “Have the unindicted human do it.”
They meant Derek, who had already refused. Leo turned to look Tammy over, lazily eyeing the Earthwoman in her worn militia uniform. Disarmed, defeated, but not the least downcast, Tammy looked calmly back at the SuperCat, not afraid to defend herself, against him, or anyone. Leo liked what he saw, saying, “Charges against you are dismissed without prejudice. Prosecutors may try to revive them before another judge—but not me. Until then, do your best. Since this is your first case, I’m sure the prosecution will agree to give you leeway….” He glanced at the Gekkos.
“Dismissed?” Speed-of-light lag made the hologram prosecutors seem slow and insensitive, as well as insubstantial. “This human is a dangerous war criminal, responsible for the deaths of thousands of sentient beings….”
“So you say.” Leo yawned, showing off gleaming canines. “But this human was not aboard the strike craft, and not in the chain-of-command, since Pender gave the launch order himself….”
“And he never held a staff vote,” Derek volunteered, though he only had Pender’s word on that.
“These are all points to be proven,” the Gekkos insisted, outraged at any attempt to shortcut justice. When Derek’s comments arrived, the Gekkos added, “Who is he to talk?”
“You just tried to make him defense attorney,” Leo pointed out. Giving another toothy yawn, the SuperCat told his court, “Case against the defense attorney is dismissed. Intercepts show Pender gave the launch order, and the strike craft carried it out. This court has neither the time nor patience to prove things everyone knows—stick to points in dispute.”
The Gekkos objected again, but Leo overruled them, then turned back to Tammy, smiling broadly, telling her, “No Greenie is going to sentence a defenseless female to death anyway. So do your damnedest, and if you screw up, the court will understand, being amateurs ourselves.”
Tammy thanked him and went to consult with her former co-conspirators. When she was done, Leo let the holos lead off, describing the strike in some detail, time, location, and numbers killed—stressing that most of the dead were infants and females. Then the chief prosecutor went from defendant to defendant, asking each one what he had done. The pilot tried to take all the responsibility himself, knowing he was dead, but hoping to save his sons, declaring adamantly, “I alone got the orders, and I alone carried out the strike.”
Nobody much believed the desperate father, but the hologram Gekko happily pocketed the abject confession, then turned to the weapons officer, asking about the strike craft’s armament, getting a complete description of the Artemis air-to-surface missile, and its antimatter warhead. Then the Gekko asked, “Did you know there were non-combatants within the kill radius?”
Nodding, the teenager admitted that he did, and that he armed and aimed the missile anyway, adding rather lamely, “We were told they were not people.”
“By who?” demanded the indignant Gekko.
Shrugging, the boy carefully avoided looking at his anguished father. “Everyone.”
Grimacing, the Gekko went on to get similar answers from the young crew chief, concluding his case. Which made it Tammy’s turn. Picking the pilot to start with, she asked about the general military situation, showing that the human settlers were outnumbered more than a hundred to one, and losing badly. “Gekkos had us surrounded and pinned down, suffering steady casualties. Gekkos moved easily over the surface, while we huddled in our bunkers, or went about in vehicles, making ourselves ready targets….”
Prosecutors objected, arguing that military considerations had nothing to do with the murder of non-combatants. Leo casually overruled them; at best, the SuperCat considered the trial a tedious evasion of responsibility, but he meant for everyone to have their say. “Go on,” he instructed Tammy, “though I doubt this line of testimony will do you any good.”
Thanking Leo, Tammy got the pilot to describe the military installations in the target city, showing that the Gekko guerrilla bands bleeding the settler militia were based among non-combatants. But the Gekko prosecutor responded by asking if the strike craft carried smart-munitions, which the weapons officer admitted it did. “Then why did you not use them?” asked the Gekko. “Confining the strike to military targets.”
“Pender ordered us to use the Artemis,” replied the pilot. Clearly, Pender had wanted a high body count—which was now likely to cost the strike team their lives. Summing up the prosecution’s case, the hologram Gekko pointed out that the dead included hundreds of humans as well, internees and POWs, held under humane conditions. Unlike Pender’s people, the Gekkos had taken prisoners and treated them reasonably well, until other humans obliterated both them and the Gekkos.
Tammy finished up with a passionate plea for mercy, claiming that the killing could stop here, if they were willing to take a risk for peace. Pender was dead, and his cause was dead. Harmonia was going to the Greenies—punishing the defeated would not make a difference. Derek’s heart went out to her, facing an Alice in Wonderland jury of brainy apes, toothy felines, and green-skinned men. He could tell Tammy had seen her fill of fighting; two light centuries from home, and one of only two humans on Harmonia who were not either under capital indictment or cowering in caves and bunkers, waiting for Greenies and SuperCats to dig them out. Her plea for peace and forgiveness reminded Derek of Mia. His Greenie girlfriend had said the same exact things when they first got together, wishing to personally plead with Pender for a cease-fire—not knowing that the Humanists would have shot her out of hand. For some people, humanity was just skin-deep. Despite Tammy’s Portland-white skin and militia uniform—complete with an empty holster strapped to her thigh—there was more similarity between her and Mia than the Humanists, or even a lot of Greenies, would admit. Defeat had wrung all the settler arrogance out of Tammy, making her sound like little blonde-green Mia; smart, open, honest, and utterly helpless in the face of force.
Tammy must have moved the Greenies on the jury too, because they acquitted the teenage crew chief—refusing to put to death someone who had merely been along for the ride. His father and brother were not so lucky. Everyone waited glumly while the verdict was virtually appealed to an off-planet court—in this case the officers of the armed merchant cruiser Eclipse, sitting in a special courts martial. Not even the Gekkos were happy, having seen Tammy and the crew chief get off—and not trusting the naval officers, most of whom were human.
Verdicts came back confirmed, much to the Gekkos’ surprise. Derek expected it, knowing naval officers had scant sympathy for the Humanist militia—bungling amateurs who gave war a bad name. Gekkos made the common mistake of assuming that all humans were the same.
Judge Leo carried the sentences out personally. Life and death were all that mattered to a SuperCat, and he would never have sat in judgment if someone else was going to execute the sentence. What would be the point? He asked the father how he wanted it done. Lips drawn, the human replied that he wanted his son to die first, “But I don’t want to see it.”
Leo understood, telling him, “Say your good-byes.” Which the dad did, first to the crew chief, then to the son who would die. Then the father watched his son obey his final order, marching off without a misstep, disappearing behind a screen of tree ferns, where Leo shot him.
When Leo came for the father, the human said a final good-bye to the Gekkos. “I’m glad we killed every one of you assholes.”
Watching the father go, Derek knew how the man felt. Ceremoniously shooting them for destroying a smallish city did seem ludicrous, since humans had gone on to kill every Gekko on the planet. Vastly outnumbered, and clinging to a few dwindling isolated settlements, Pender’s people knew that even antimatter warheads would not win for them—so the Humanists countered with their ultimate weapon. When the settlers first arrived after two centuries in transit and found Harmonia inhabited by Gekkos, plans for terraforming the planet were put on hold. Facing complete defeat, Pender ordered the terraforming into immediate operation. Deep-space teams at the edge of Ares system crashed water ice comets rich in CO2 into Harmonia, producing surface water, rain, and green-house gases. At the same time, Pender’s biotechs released superplants into the thicker wetter atmosphere, sending oxygen levels soaring. Mounting oxygen and humidity killed all the Gekkos that didn’t flee off-planet. Homo sapiens had again come out on top, against daunting odds, and on alien ground. Proving that humans were a dangerous species to tangle with—for those few that did not already know.
Tammy took away the surviving teenager, acquitted of all charges, but still rendered a homeless orphan by the courts. Derek let her go without a word, guessing that this was not the moment to offer her a job working for the new masters of Harmonia.
He caught up with Tammy in orbit, where settler families waited to be shipped outsystem. Trust Greenies to design the perfect transit camp, turning the main hold of a C-class freighter into a hologram tropical isle, complete with warm sunlight, sea breezes, and righteous waves. Folks lived in thatched treehouses and palm huts, while a dropshaft in the island’s center led to more standard decks—for those who tired of paradise. Tammy sat on the beach staring out to sea, having traded her militia uniform for a gaudy sarong and a hibiscus blossom tucked behind her ear. Other refugees lounged about in various states of undress, and children splashed in the surf beneath a bright hologram sky—including Brad, who Tammy turned out to be watching. Someone upwind was roasting a pig, while teenagers lovingly smoothed and sanded balsawood surfboards.
Sitting down in the hot sand beside Tammy, he watched a blue breaker slam into the beach, sending glittering spray flying through warm tropical air. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Tammy had nicely rounded breasts, even if they weren’t green. “Is this what Portland is like?”
Laughing, Tammy looked over at him, the first time he had coaxed more than a smile out of her. “No, this is not Portland. Not even close.”
“Really?” The Charter of Universal Rights said that internees must be kept in conditions “approximating” their home world—and Greenies scrupulously obeyed such conventions, not wanting to deny anyone their rights. “Earth is not like this?”
“Parts of it are.” Tammy’s smile faded, and she stared evenly at him, an intense questioning look that surprised Derek—it seemed like Tammy needed something from him, but would not say what. Which Derek found strange. Greenie females were very upfront about their needs; if they wanted something they said so. All Tammy said was, “What are you doing here?”
Good question. Derek was not sure what he was doing, but he did want to see more of Tammy, so he tried to start on a positive note. “You were amazing, standing up to the court like you did, saving that boy’s life….”
“But not his father and brother.” Tammy sounded bitter, looking back at Brad, another orphan. By utterly wiping out the Gekkos, Pender and company had assured that the blame would forever fall on Tammy’s people.
“You did wonderfully.” Derek meant it; he had talked to Tammy on a whim, but everything she did since drew him in. Her plea for peace, her caring for homeless kids, her bravery before armed SuperCats. “Leo would have killed that boy, as easily as the others. You saved him, when I was afraid to even try.”
“You, afraid?” Tammy’s smile returned, as if she could not really believe him. “I thought you were the nerveless negotiator who walked unarmed into the muzzles of machine cannon.”
“Only in my spare time,” Derek explained. “Normally I’m a vacuum hand, a pilot. Greenies grabbed me for this job because I was the only human they could easily get a hold of.”
“Yet you took the job,” Tammy reminded him, “idiotically going into grave danger just to save complete strangers.”
And winning points with Tammy. Derek could tell by how her smile widened, making this the moment to ask, “Idiotically? I hope not, because I fancied you might join me.”
“Join you?” Taken aback, Tammy acted like she had started to trust him, but now was not sure. “Working for Greenies?”
“Photo sapiens do pay me,” Derek admitted, “but that’s not why I do it.” He nodded toward Brad, splashing in the surf with the other children. “That’s who I do it for—there are still a lot of innocents dirtside, and a woman would be very helpful in getting them out safely, especially an Earthwoman.”
Tammy looked at him with that same questioning stare, like she wanted something from him—but all she said was, “Do you know how hard it is to lose everything? To see good friends blown to bits for no reason?”
