Exodus, page 29
“So you’ll pay for the refit when I have a generator?”
“No,” an exasperated Zelinda said. “Do you even listen to what you’ve been saying? Anyone who has a ship capable of flying through the Gates of Heaven can raise an almost unlimited amount of finance from the banks to fund their flight. When you have one, you’ll no longer need us. Then you will have proved yourself.”
“Well…yeah, obviously.” I was just hoping for a little help after all I’ve achieved on my own so far. A sliver of respect, even.
“In the meantime,” his mother said swiftly, “you have a responsibility to assist the survivors in settling in at Hafnir. For a start, there is an entire livestone city to grow for them.”
“But I have to acquire a ZPZ generator. Josias can manage…”
He trailed off as his mother and sister both looked at him with exactly the same unnervingly disdainful expression. For a moment, he even thought little Augusta was doing it, too. Really? he stormed silently. Even now, after all my accomplishments, after showing you that I can stand up by myself and face odds you have no conception of, you’re still not going to help? Have you not got a single gram of respect for me, your own flesh and blood?
Their countenances told him the answer to that.
“The people you brought here need your help,” Zelinda said. “Are you that egocentric you will disregard your moral obligation?”
“No,” he muttered.
“There are no shortcuts in life, Finbar,” his mother said. “I had hoped that even you would have realized that by now.”
“Yes, mother.” And with that he could almost hear the gates of the family cage closing around him again.
* * *
—
Finn watched without comment as they got out of the globecab, and Josias stared up at Okkwell Manor in astonishment. With a grandiose central rotunda of mellow-gold livestone, surrounded by ten soaring obelisk spires three hundred and fifty meters tall, tipped with white-gold helixes, the building was visible for tens of kilometers across Santa Rosa. Six hundred thirty years ago, armed with avaricious intentions, Mariama Kamara-Ryanah had commissioned a famous uranic sculptor-architect to produce a structure of unrivaled charm and opulence to aid her family’s stature. The first daughter of a prominent uranic family, married to a second cousin of the Jalgori-Tobu marchioness, her social ambition saw her rising to the top of Santa Rosa’s society. But rivalries with other uranic families, poor choices of dynastic marriages for her children, and a minor financial scandal that her private estate was forced to repay, had led to her branch of the family falling from grace and importance.
Okkwell Manor had followed the family’s fate, its interior decaying for a couple of centuries before being turned into apartments by a creditor. Then it was variously a commercial hub for custom designers and microfacturies, an artists’ retreat, and at one point someone even turned the giant central atrium into a butterflyarium. Two centuries ago, ill-advised modifications were made to the lower levels of the rotunda to turn it into a theater, then when that went bankrupt, stables for the more successful society families whose own nearby mansions were becoming crowded with kinfolk. None of these chapters of its life were particularly successful, although the exterior still retained its graceful appearance.
In the end, Otylia acquired the failing stables enterprise and turned Okkwell Manor into a Gath sanctuary—much to the chagrin of the district’s society families.
“So why, exactly, are we here, my boy?” Josias asked.
“Otylia is the smart one,” Finn told him and Ellie. “She’ll know what to do.”
Ellie grinned at Josias. “You can wait outside if you like.”
He ignored her.
The huge arched entrance opened into a vaulted cloister, which led all the way through the rotunda to the cylindrical atrium at the center. Finn’s lnc patch led them to a ward in the sanctuary’s clinic wing, which had once been a series of high-ceilinged state rooms whose bulbous windows overlooked the atrium garden. The original rich ornamentation had been stripped out long ago, to be replaced by rows of large beds.
Josias cast a curious gaze around. “What is this, land of the giants?”
Ellie gave him a warning look. He just shrugged.
There were about twenty Gath in the ward. Finn supposed they might seem intimidating if you weren’t used to them. To him the Gath were a lovely people, created with a neural pathology that was gentle and meek. It offset their size, with a height that averaged out around three meters, while their frames were heavily muscled under a thick skin the color of pale rust. Their strength was intended to provide a labor force that could perform strenuous repetitive tasks at a time when androids weren’t always available or affordable during the Crucible Era. They could be found in many Centauri Cluster Dominions, although few Celestial societies had any use for them now.
Humans, however, found plenty of jobs for them—the type of low-paid, tough, and dirty jobs people just didn’t want to do. Their docile nature left them exposed to exploitation by workforce enterprises, who had outsourcing contracts for basic industry and agriculture services. The courts did prosecute abusive managers when someone brought charges, but few bothered, because no one really noticed the conditions the Gath suffered under, nor the living standards they were forced to endure once they’d signed on with an employer. The abuse they suffered in Santa Rosa had declined in recent years with Otylia championing them, but there were societal limits to what even a Jalgori-Tobu could achieve.
The Gath in the ward were wearing the kind of toga that was favored by the majority of their kind: a simple cloth robe with ties on the shoulder. Most of them were nursing staff, with a few technicians working the stacks of basic medical equipment standing beside each bed.
Finn was disturbed that more than half of the beds were occupied. His sympathies for the big Changelings went all the way back to when he was fifteen and Otylia discovered what was to become her cause for life.
His sister was sitting on the side of a bed halfway down the ward. She was talking quietly to a Gath lying on it, while two more stood beside her. Finn flinched when he saw the injuries the Changeling had received. Large patches of groflesh had been applied to his leathery skin. From what he knew about brawling, Finn reckoned someone had given him a serious beating, probably with some kind of bat or metal post. Gaths had distinctive round noses, but this one had been smashed almost flat into his face.
Otylia looked around and smiled weakly up at Finn. He could see she’d been crying. When she got to her feet, he put his arms around her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What happened?”
“They gave Pablo a beating,” she said, gesturing at the Gath in the bed.
“Why? Who did?”
“It was a cage fight.”
“You’re kidding me! I thought mother had put a stop to those.”
“She has. In Santa Rosa. But not in Grande Amines; that’s the Tempis-Encet marchioness’s prefecture. They don’t care.”
“Hell.”
“Renata is his wife,” she said, gesturing at the Gath woman at the end of the bed who dipped her head at Finn. “She and Helio, her brother, brought him here.”
Finn frowned. A Gath face was not naturally expressive—their skin was too thick to allow the features to convey small muscle movements—but their eyes made up for it. And he’d never before seen the level of sadness consuming Renata. “How did they get here?” he asked.
“On a train.”
“By themselves?”
“Yes.”
“That’s bold.”
“We had to,” Renata whispered. “Pablo hurt bad, he’s bleed inside and out. We knows the Okkwell Manor help, everyone knows. Your sister a saint.”
“I guess she is,” Finn said, for once without any irony.
“So, what happened?” Ellie asked.
“They tell Pablo he have to fight. He’s not want to. They’s angry with him.”
“The bastards gave him drugs—the kind they thought would make him aggressive,” Otylia said. “That didn’t work, so they beat him, hoping that would trigger him. It didn’t, of course; the Gath aren’t built that way. Renata told me all he did was sit there and cry.”
“I’m so sorry,” Ellie said.
“He’s safe here now,” Otylia said, and put her hand reassuringly on Renata’s forearm. “All of you are safe.”
Finn kept an arm around his sister’s shoulder as they left the ward. He knew how much it cost her to be the level-headed, resourceful director of Okkwell. Inside she was still his sister who, at age fifteen, wept for days when their mother had made them accompany her on a visit to a Gath charity, and they both learned how humans treated the Changelings.
“You can’t take a personal interest in every case,” he said softly once they were back in the cloister. “It’s too much.”
“If I don’t, who will?”
“Plenty of people, by the look of it,” Josias said, indicating the human staff walking about. “You inspire people to work with you. It takes more than just a good cause to attract capable staff. And this place is certainly rocking.”
“Yes, I suppose,” Otylia said in a tired voice. “I just…I want to be sure they’re getting the right treatment, you know?”
“A true leader learns to delegate. You’re micromanaging, which is an organizational flaw. Let the staff do their jobs without you hovering over them. That way, you can spend time organizing strategy. You’ll accomplish a hell of a lot more. Trust me.”
Otylia gave a reluctant nod. “That makes sense, I guess.” She took a breath. “Sorry. You’ve just traveled here from the palace. What is it you want?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Finn said. It was telling that the first person he’d sought out after such a crushing disappointment was his twin, but then in his mind it had always been the two of them against the rest of the family. He gave the clinic wing a guilty glance. “This isn’t the right time.”
“Ah. Mummy said no, then?”
“Yup. The family will not loan me a single watt. It’s crazy. The Diligent has the potential to earn a fortune, but all she wants to do is drag me back into the fold.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Otylia said knowingly. “Her focus is all on little Augusta now, the next heir. I’m not even the spare anymore. And as for you, I doubt she cares if you fly off down a Gate of Heaven. Your departure would be politically less embarrassing to the family.”
“Hey!”
“True though, yes?”
“Yes,” Finn said petulantly. He couldn’t look at his sister; he knew how much her victory smile would burn. Then he realized Otylia had cocked her head to one side and was staring intently at him. “What?”
“Strategy,” she said. And her smile switched from Finn to Josias. “That’s what both of us need, right?”
“Strategy makes the galaxy go round,” Josias said with a shrug. “It also gets you where you want to go, as long as you’re prepared to push hard enough for it. Are you?”
“Oh, I’m prepared all right. If Renata can take a train between cities, I can find a sanctuary for the Gath.”
Finn grinned. “You’re going to sign over one of your title lands to the Gath to give them an independent state? That’s brilliant, Otylia. Hey, you’re Countess of Fernwic; that’s almost next door to Hafnir.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Otylia retorted. “I’d never get mummy to sign off on that. She was cross enough when I bought Okkwell Manor. No, show me.”
“Huh?”
She grabbed his hand. “The Diligent! Show me.”
Their induction pads touched. Finn’s pride bloomed as he exhibited the arkship. There was no shame in the pride. This was what he’d achieved on his own, with no help from his dreaded family.
He revealed the splendor of it in orbit above Kinnox, how his amazement had grown as the true size became apparent. Mine, all mine!
“Ho, ease back there, Awakened Tiger,” his twin chided through their connection.
Next, he exhibited a viewpoint gliding along the arkship’s long spine of machinery—astroengineering technology advanced enough to carry them across tens of thousands of light-years, but at the same time impossibly primitive with flashing lights and big pipes. Then he dropped to a memory inside the life support spheres, bright, hot, lush gardens in space, an aristocrat’s orangery of exotic foliage lifted straight out of Earth’s steam age.
“There!” Otylia said. “Right there.” Her hand fell away from Finn’s, breaking the rich mental vision. She was smiling widely. “That’s it.”
“What?” he asked her, confused.
“The Diligent needs people working constantly to keep all that ancient machinery functioning—a lot of people, people you can’t afford. That’s the real bummer. Once those life support spheres start to fail, you’ll be facing a cascade effect. Remove one and the rest have to take up the slack. And they can’t, can they? Because right now they’re already operating at their limit. Besides, the very people who are the experts in maintaining them are stampeding out of your lovely arkship to come down here. It’s more than a refit you need; you need crew members. Thousands of them. And where are you going to get them? Even Traveler ships only carry a dozen or so tech specialists during a flight. You need a hundred or more people working full-time just to keep a life support sphere going, which houses the engineers that maintain the rest of the ship, and so it goes…Even if you get commercial cargoes, or your dumbest fantasy yet of salvaging Remnant Era tech, you’ll have to split any profit between at least ten thousand people. What kind of wage is that?”
“Okay,” Finn said, annoyed at her attack on his accomplishment. “It’s a problem; I never said it wasn’t. I just need the seed money to make that first flight.”
“No, you don’t. You need people. People who aren’t going to abandon ship when you pay them one watt a year. People who are there because that’s where they want to be, because they’ll be safe in your mini-habitat. People who can easily maintain those basic old machines.”
“Ugh,” he gasped as he finally realized what she was talking about. He turned and stared back along the cloister to the Okkwell’s clinic wing. “You mean…?”
“Yes! The Gath.” She took both his hands, connecting to him again, adding an emotional thrust to every thought she poured into his mind. “Don’t you see? It’s the perfect solution. They get to live offworld, away from all the prejudice and hatred they face down here. Their own little society where they’re finally safe. You provide them with a home—a real home—and in return you get a crew that keeps the Diligent fully operational for themselves as well as you. I saw it in your memories; the Diligent has the engineering capacity to manufacture its own replacement parts. The Gath can do it. They’re not just good for digging ditches or lifting rocks; they make good technical operators, too. Their brains are bigger than ours; it’s only blind bigotry that believes a hulking body means stupidity.”
Finn nodded slowly as he processed the idea, with only a small tweak of envy that he hadn’t thought of it himself.
“Smart solution,” Josias said in admiration. “A real bootstrap.”
Otylia gave him a coquettish pout, then turned back to Finn. “Jealous, much?” she taunted.
“Huh?”
“I came up with the solution. That’s why you came here, isn’t it? For me to save the day—and your arse.”
“It’s an okay idea,” he mocked right back. “It might even work.”
“Asteria’s tits, it’ll work! Now you’re free to concentrate on the real problem.”
“Getting a ZPZ generator,” he acknowledged.
“Yeah. Do you need me to solve that one for you, too?”
“No. I know people who might be able to help. I just need a favor from a friend of yours.”
* * *
—
The betrayal party was at the mansion of a senior uranic family, the Lynnwood-m’Phets, whose first daughter and heir, Kotya, was super-best-friends-for-always with Otylia. Guests were usually drawn exclusively from the younger generation of Santa Rosa’s society, the uranic families who helped oversee civil administration, or had centuries-old ties with the enterprises of Celestial Grand Families that were the bedrock of Gondiar’s economy.
It meant Finn was back among his loathsome own once more. Everyone thronging the rooms of the mansion’s sprawling reception wing was beautiful, or at least groomed into elegance for the night. Dresses and suits cost a fortune, he knew, which was ridiculous, as most of them barely covered anything. His disapproval rose. The more he talked to Josias, the more he understood about economics. Not just the institutional finance that he’d been taught so he could manage his estates, but personal economics, and how it reached down into the life of everyone on Gondiar and Anoosha. Surrounded by such excessive profligacy, he was surprised he hadn’t noticed Gondiar’s wealth gap when he was with Graça. But then, he admitted to himself, he’d been so superficial back then.
Kotya greeted them effusively as they arrived.
“Thank you for inviting Gyvoy,” Finn told her when he’d disentangled himself; a party was the perfect cover for business—especially the kind he was interested in.
“Oh, no,” Kotya replied coyly. “You always know the most interesting people.”
“Don’t be so modest. You have to know the right people to get hold of betrayal.”
“One does what one can,” Kotya mocked. She insisted on administering the betray spray herself. “No exceptions,” she chided when he demurred. “No fair to others if you’re not dosed.”
Finn sighed and let her dose him. Betrayal was a fad that was almost a fortnight old. Someone had brought a batch down the Santa Rosa tower, a Remnant Era biomolecule that lodged in the surface of the eye, then reacted to specific hormones released into the bloodstream by activating its bioluminescence. The hormones this particular batch had been attuned to were supposedly the indicators of human arousal. A user’s eyes would sparkle indigo, meaning you could literally see the light in their eyes when they were turned on.
