Second interim, p.12
Second Interim, page 12
“Never,” Coura said. “We’re family. No matter what.”
She chose to emphasize that not only for the sake of Coleridge, who wasn’t technically family, but also to soften the impact on her father of a question she had decided in just the last minute she couldn’t pass up this opportunity to ask. Not after Section J15.
“If something really is giving you knowledge of things you have no business knowing, then answer this, if you can.”
Drawing a deep breath, she took the plunge.
“Where is Kearn?”
After a frozen moment, Simon and Coleridge answered almost in unison, “Still on Tanris-4.”
Chapter Eleven
<
Interim Directorate of Research & Assessment
Ref. No. KZ-45132-419
Type: Planet, Class 4A
System: CN772-2298
Local designation: Tanris
Interim registered designation: Tanris-4
Dominant language: Yoqon (Interim designation: Taniri)
Tech Quotient: 8.9
Commonwealth Induction Quotient: 7.1
Revision date: I.0211
<
On the Interim’s first contact with Tanris-4 during the great Survey, Tanrian civilization was found to have achieved and maintained a level of sophistication and stability on par with that of Reissa, Veilat, and other worlds that went on to become charter members of the Commonwealth. However, when presented with the possibility of membership, the numerous powers holding a stake in Tanris-4’s global leadership disagreed on whether or not to accept.
Eventually, following some acrimony that stopped just short of warfare, the Tanrians opted to make an application. Commonwealth membership was declined, falling short by four votes in committee. Those who voted against cited as their primary reason the Tanrians’ equivocation in deciding to apply.
At the Expansion Conference of I.030, Tanris-4 was granted limited Partner status. Subsequent Expansion Conferences have cited various minor geopolitical conflicts in denying Tanris-4 full Commonwealth membership.
<
Notwithstanding a very few negative indicators, Tanris-4 has evinced remarkable stability during the Interim era and is likely to be welcomed into the Commonwealth at a future Conference.
[Detailed entry follows.]
* * *
Visitors rarely came to the house by the lake, but it was equipped to receive them. At the base of the half-kilometer trail that snaked up through a wooded slope to its entrance, a large set of chimes was hung, along with a tethered stick and brightly painted sign:
PLEASE ANNOUNCE YOURSELF.
Before the apocalypse, before bombs and bio-warfare had slaughtered eighty percent of Tanris’s population, someone had owned this beautiful home by the lake. Their child or children had played on the swing that dangled from a high, strong limb. Their friends had stayed in the guest house beside the pool whose smooth edges once lapped with cool, clear water.
That was then.
Now, the pool was a cracked pit of dry leaves and debris, the guest house roof had long ago collapsed, and the main residence served as home to two squatters, Mayweather Kearn and Jilan Zerouali.
They had lived there sixteen Tanrian years. According to Zerouali, who had neurilace and thus could calculate such things easily, that span amounted to more than twenty-one ship-years. But that number didn’t even account for the full duration of their unintended stay on Tanris-4. The first eight, before they’d come to the house, had been more eventful and less pleasant.
In the years of their ‘retirement’ by the lake, located deep in Qondas Freedom Ranger territory, the spacers-turned squatters had welcomed very few visitors. Most had been drifters, treated well and sent on their way. Once, and once only, they had been forced to kill a pair who’d come with ill intent.
Today, on a quiet winter day when snow covered the path and the lake was frozen over, the chimes rang for perhaps the twentieth time ever.
Kearn was up on a wind turbine investigating why it was generating at half capacity when he heard the sound. Zerouali was down at ground level, having just finished carrying wood from the shed to the house to heat them through the night. Even when all the turbines and solar panels were working at a hundred percent, they didn’t waste power on things that could be accomplished with a good fire. Power was for luxuries, like transmitting signals that might be picked up by a spacecraft in orbit.
Hypothetically, if a spacecraft ever came and cared enough to answer.
“What do you think that is?” Zerouali asked of the chimes, looking in their direction. Jilan’s neurilace-enhanced eyesight was superior to Kearn’s, but it could still only see in a straight line, and the road entrance wasn’t visible from here. Neither could it be seen from Kearn’s higher vantage on the turbine.
“I hope it’s a who, not a what,” Kearn said as he started the climb down.
“I meant what in the sense of what reason—never mind.”
Kearn dropped to the snowy ground beside her. “Arm up?” he asked.
“Probably should.”
Together, keeping an eye out for visible guests, they walked to the house and retrieved the firearms they kept loaded in a cabinet—a Model G55 combustion projectile rifle for each, parting gifts from the Qondas Freedom Rangers. Slinging them over shoulders, they walked back out into the cold and started down the wooded path.
They were still within sight of the house behind them when the figure on gronceback appeared, approaching up the path. Kearn and Zerouali leveled their weapons at the winter-clad rider as he or she reined in the mount and slid from its back.
“Hello, stranger!” Kearn called out in the local tongue. Having not planned a long stay on Tanris-4, he’d had to learn the language the hard way rather than having it imprinted during hibe. “What brings you here?”
Without speaking, the rider led the mount to the nearest tree and hitched its reins before showing Kearn and Zerouali empty, gloved hands and continuing on foot. While it walked, a hand went to the face, where it tugged down a scarf to fully reveal a face.
Seeing it, Kearn lowered his weapon and engaged the safety. So did Zerouali.
“Aprile!” Kearn exclaimed, going forward to meet his former crewmate.
The parties stopped a few feet apart. Kearn and Zerouali smiled. Aprile didn’t.
“It’s been what, three years? Five?” Kearn asked, switching to Galactic.
“Something like that.”
“It’s a long ride from BunQr, if that’s where you came from,” Zerouali said. “Come up to the house and get warm. We’ll feed you.”
With apparent indifference, Aprile agreed, and the three embarked toward the house.
“We haven’t had any news for a while,” Zerouali said as they walked. “I hope you’ll update us.”
“I hope she didn’t come to gossip,” Kearn said. “Tell me you’re staying. Did you finally retire from the QFR?”
“No.”
“Then you do have news,” Kearn concluded. “Probably not the good kind.”
Aprile declined to confirm or deny. They reached the house and entered the front den, where the two residents spent most of their time in the winter on account of the iron stove in the fireplace.
“How’s Ymbeth?” Zerouali asked Aprile on the way in.
Ymbeth had been Aprile’s lover in the Qondas Freedom Rangers and the primary reason she’d chosen to remain with the QFR after Kearn and Zerouali accepted the offer of freedom.
“She was killed two years ago,” Aprile reported matter-of-factly.
“I’m so sorry.”
Zerouali’s condolence sounded sincere, and probably was, notwithstanding that she and Kearn had never thought highly of Ymbeth. Outside of Aprile’s presence, they had commonly described her with phrases like twitchy psychopath.
“Then what kept you at BunQr?” Kearn asked. “You could’ve joined us here.”
“To fish and chop wood? Still not my kind of lifestyle.”
“But constant war is?”
“You don’t need me here,” Aprile said. “They do.”
“But we do want you here.” Zerouali set out a bowl of foraged nuts and forced a mug of home brew into Aprile’s hand. “We’d have loved for you to stay. We still would. Our home is yours.”
“Aprile, you’ve done enough for the QFR,” Kearn urged. “Leave it behind. Just stay. This wasn’t my lifestyle, either, but after a while, you’ll see. Anything’s better than what the QFR had us doing.”
When she let too many moments pass, Kearn began to find Aprile’s silence disturbing.
“So what’s the news from BunQr?” he moved on.
With gaze averted and a sigh that sounded born of shame, Aprile unleashed devastation: “They want you back.”
“What?” Kearn and Zerouali blurted, almost simultaneously. “They can’t have us!” Kearn continued. “Who said it? Gharta? No way. We had an agreement! We’re out—for good! We earned it!”
“Gharta’s dead,” Aprile said. “It’s his successor, Ghonel. He got another flyer operational, but there’s no one to pilot it.”
“By ‘he’ got a flyer operational, don’t you mean you?” Kearn asked angrily. “Fly it yourself!”
“I would,” Aprile said. Kearn understood that to mean the QFR’s leader wouldn’t risk her. As an engineer, she was too valuable.
“What about the pilots I trained for them?”
“All dead.”
Kearn swallowed a rage that pushed him to return to the gun cabinet and press the muzzle of a G55 to Aprile’s skull. In spite of whatever connection they’d once had, maybe he could even pull the trigger.
“If we refuse?” he asked, if only to confirm what he expected.
“There’s a team waiting to take you by force,” Aprile said. “Ghonel allowed me to ask you first.”
“Ask...” Kearn echoed in disgust. “This isn’t asking, Aprile. Can’t you see what they’ve done to you?”
Putting himself directly in front of her, he opted to aim an appeal at his old crewmate’s better nature instead of a firearm at her head.
“The QFR’s fight isn’t your fight!” he implored her. “It shouldn’t be anyone’s! How are two factions called the Qondas Freedom Rangers and the Reformed Qondas Freedom Rangers still squabbling with each other after—how long—fifty years? Do they even know why anymore?”
“There was a ceasefire for a lot of that time,” Aprile argued without conviction.
“Oh, well, that’s fine, then!” Kearn mocked. “Nothing ties you to them, Aprile. Help us get out of this! We won’t go back.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“Bullshit, Aprile! You’re important enough that they won’t risk you piloting missions. You have influence. Help us.”
Even as Kearn spoke, the look in Aprile’s eyes told him he’d already failed. This wasn’t his engineer from Lady of Chaos. This wasn’t a marooned spacer. This wasn’t a crewmate or a friend. Aprile was QFR now. She probably hadn’t even volunteered to come here but just been ordered to in the hope of saving the strike team the trouble.
Her blankly delivered response thus came as no surprise.
“Just do what they want,” she said. “You’ll be taken care of.”
Recognizing Aprile as a lost cause, Kearn said to Zerouali, “We’ll have to run. I hate it, but it’s our only choice.”
Looking shattered but determined, Zerouali agreed.
“You might make it away from here, and you might not,” Aprile said. “If you do, maybe you’ll last a while. But how is flying a few missions worse than living on the run? Once you leave QFR territory, there’s nothing. Just warlords and gangs. At least in BunQr, you’ll be comfortable.” She looked at Zerouali and added, to Kearn, “She can even stay behind here, if she wants. They only want you.”
“You mean under guard,” Kearn surmised. “Just as much a hostage as she was in BunQr, keeping me from flying off and never coming back. Aprile, it’s inhuman. Is there anything left of the person you used to be?”
Aprile looked back at him with dull eyes and shrugged. “Maybe you never knew me that well.”
Mind scrambling, Kearn said, “Jilan, get the guns and fill a bag with whatever you can carry.” Then he asked Aprile, “Will you even give us a head start?”
She hesitated. “I can say you got the drop on me. But I don’t advise that path. Think it over first. I’ll leave you alone.”
Aprile strode to the front door, producing a packet of cigarettes from her jacket as she walked, and stepped outside. Alone, Kearn and Zerouali found each other’s arms and held on tightly, as if to prevent the life they’d built from slipping away. It was hardly the life that either would have chosen, but since the theft of Lady of Chaos by Tanrians eager to escape the wasteland of their collapsed civilization, they’d managed to make the best of being marooned.
“We shouldn’t run,” Zerouali said in a pained whisper.
“We have to. This isn’t right. We’re free! We’ll stay that way.”
“They’ll hunt us. Staying alive is more important.”
“Says the woman who ran from the Interim,” Kearn said. “That worked out well enough, didn’t it?” He kissed the hairs on her temple.
“That’s exactly it,” Zerouali said. “When you run alone, it’s only yourself who suffers. And if they catch you, only you pay the price. With two...”
Pondering the argument, Kearn grew resigned. “I see your point. I wish I didn’t.”
“Cooperate with them. We’ll figure something out.”
“Is that another feeling?” Kearn asked.
Ever since they’d been marooned on Tanris-4, Zerouali had had a feeling that things would just work out, even if she wasn’t sure what that meant. Kearn wasn’t sure whether she still felt that way. She’d stopped saying it years ago, after events showed that nothing was going to ‘work out’ anytime soon.
“I do,” she said. “The most important thing is to stay alive. And we do that by going along with them. Sooner or later, an opportunity will come. We’ll be ready for it.”
“Alright,” Kearn conceded. Though hardly convinced, he trusted her judgment at least as much as his own. Nor was he thrilled with what he had to say next. “You should take the offer to stay here.”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “To find a way out together, we have to be together.”
“That’s your final word?”
“Final.”
Kearn kissed her and said, “I love you,” as though it might be the last time
“I love you,” she returned, and they walked hand in hand out into the cold to give their answer to the messenger who’d once been their friend, but was no longer.
* * *
The armed Freedom Rangers waiting nearby had brought along a cart drawn by two gronces. Kearn and Zerouali loaded a minimum of possessions and then boarded it themselves. At nightfall, they camped in an abandoned house before resuming the journey the following morning. Kearn and Zerouali shared no words with Aprile on the road or in camp. What words could there be?
Neither did they converse with the soldiers of the QFR, all of whom looked to be under fifty. Without gene surgery at birth, the Tanrians lived out natural human lifespans—or, more likely, considering the lack of medicines and constant state of conflict, less than natural lifespans. Only the very oldest of Tanrians knew anything of the civilization that had come before. Most now living had been born into ruins.
In the evening, the silent journey ended among some low hills, at an ugly, fenced-in assortment of one-story concrete structures that were the visible aspects of BunQr, the underground headquarters of the Qondas Freedom Rangers.
Inside the compound, a Ranger with officer stars on his unbuttoned jacket, hawking and spitting on the ground frequently, even indoors, escorted Kearn and Zerouali to their living quarters, Down into the concrete depths he took them, via a stairwell lit with flickering florescents, to a place Kearn and Zerouali already knew: They were the very same living quarters they’d inhabited in this terrible place, against their will, for eight years.
Now, the dank smell was stronger, and the furnishings were sixteen Tanrian years older. The two who would once again be forced to dwell there held each other’s hands tightly as they entered. They held their tongues, too, and their breaths, as well as they could. The guide left them there without any words of welcome, not that they had interest in hearing any.
For a while, they held each other, silent in their shared despair. A knock at the door signaled the arrival of a woman bringing bedding, towels, toiletries, and a few small bags of beans and dried meat. She smiled and exchanged brief pleasantries but otherwise made no attempt to engage before leaving.
After her came the commander of the QFR, General Ghonel, who’d apparently taken over from the previous leader, to whom Kearn had been indentured. So much time had passed that Kearn might not even have noticed they weren’t the same man. Both were squat, greasy and crag-faced.
“Welcome back, Mr Kearn.” Ghonel’s Tanrian made the name sound like Kerd. He subsequently made even more of a mess of Zerouali’s.
Kearn’s instinctive reply was to tell Ghonel to choke on it, but he settled for, “We don’t want to be here. We demand to be released.”
“I understand,” Ghonel said in a way that made clear he didn’t care. “None of us wants to be at war. But we are. It makes us do things. Even me.”
Like most born after the fall of Tanrian civilization, Ghonel wasn’t heavily educated, as his speech patterns made apparent.
“I was forced to call up reserves,” he said. “That’s you.”
“We’re not your reserves!” Kearn grated, struggling to check anger. “We earned our freedom, not that anyone had the right to take it in the first place. I ferried your troops around for eight years. I trained your people to take over. I was done. Gharta agreed.”
“I know that. Things change. War is difficult. You’ve enjoyed QFR protection now, living on our lands, for a long time. Much longer than you served. Now you’re needed. It’s time to pay back.”
