Forty-Eight #2
“To murder one of our own?” She pushes to her feet. “Martim didn’t ask to be recorporalized. He was betrayed by his own client and put in an impossible situation, and you betrayed him a second time, in the worst way.”
“He was an elite atier who guided his client’s hand. You do him a disservice to paint him as an innocent victim.” Constance’s voice hardens. “And can you even speak about devotion to the Code anymore, Isa? Have your own actions been without personal bias?”
The knowing look the Partner levels at her former apprentice is a reminder of everything she’s overheard these past weeks.
It hits Isako at that moment, the crushing weight of defeat. Strange, to be heartbroken by a tragedy she had to come to grips with once already.
Martim won’t have a funeral or a nameplace. No coda of his will be published or spoken. His name won’t be memorialized by the Agency. In his last moments of life, he didn’t even get to see the world through his own eyes.
Constance turns in a circle, gesturing around them. “This is a fantasy. The reality of our world has always been harsh. Humankind survives because of safeguards: the airshield, social norms and Company policy, resource rationing, KPIs, the Code of Client Service… and rules around synthtechnology.”
The old Partner’s thin lips press into a grim line.
“Sandbar Uchi was desperate and ingenious… and what he did was unconscionable madness. The highest purpose of the contractor is to serve. It’s unnatural to outlive one’s client.
Imagine the implications, the horrible precedent, if Martim had been confirmed to the Board of Directors and continued to rule SoCon GasPro as Sandbar Uchi. ”
“No one would have to know.”
“Savannah Minto would know. The reunionists behind her would learn the truth. Others, eventually. All it takes are cracks in the foundation to bring down an entire building.”
“Bullshit.” Isako backs away. “You overheard everything he told me about the Board’s secret files.
You had him killed because of the upcoming AGM vote.
If he allied with the reunionists, the Great Silence would end.
If the homeworld is out there and we can communicate with them, then that means there are other livable worlds and other ways of living.
It means we might not need the Company at all.
We might not need an Executive, or a Board, or directors and synthbodies, and if we don’t need all that, then we certainly don’t need contractors, and that would mean the end of the Agency and your position of power. ”
Constance wraps the loose folds of her cardigan close around her thin, aged body. She gazes at her apprentice steadily. “Isa, we’ve known about the signals for two hundred years.”
She stares, uncomprehending. “What do you mean?”
“On the third centennial, the dormant remnants of the Tenacity shipmind unlocked communication protocols and gave them to the Executive at the time.”
Isako shakes her head. “No, that’s impossible.
Martim stole the agenda for the most recent Board meeting.
The members are scheduled to vote on whether to release the evidence.
Sandbar Uchi met with the Executive personally to confirm it.
” Her voice rises, insistent. “Uchi was desperate to preserve the Great Silence. That’s why he did such a terrible thing to Martim. ”
Constance remains infuriatingly calm. “Yes, the Board is scheduled to vote on the issue this year. They vote on the same question every fifty years. After the initial vote in the year 300, a standing agreement was reached with the Sweetsea, to revisit the decision at regular intervals and ensure ‘the homeworld issue,’ as it was called, was reconsidered in light of new times, and that each generation of the Company’s leaders would make the choice for themselves. ”
“That makes absolutely no fucking sense!” Isako blurts. “There are dedicated big-Es on the Board. Savannah Minto’s among them. Reunification with the homeworld is their ultimate goal. They wouldn’t vote against such a crucial issue.”
“Yet they have, four times already.”
Perhaps, she thinks, this is a dream. A nightmare.
Another simulation, but this time, some test of her sanity.
“You’re telling me,” Isako says, feeling vaguely ill, “that Sandbar Uchi put himself into cryostasis and put his atier’s brain in a jar, all to preserve a secret that’s not even a secret, that’s been known by the Sweetsea and the Board of Directors for two centuries ? ”
Melancholy makes Constance look even older.
“Directors are always feuding, but without fundamental stability, there would be nothing to feud over. In this regard, the Board is united. There are safeguards to ensure its members maintain confidentiality regardless of the outcome of the vote. Synthbodies require Company-approved upgrades and maintenance, after all. Uchi would’ve learned the full truth in time, once he joined their ranks, if only he hadn’t been so paranoid and secretive, and if only his ego hadn’t driven him to act so egregiously. ”
“How do you know all this?”
“Because I was the Executive’s atier, fifty years ago, when the last vote took place.” She smiles at her apprentice’s nonplussed expression. “Yes, I really am that old, Isa.”
Isako searches for a reply but comes up empty.
Constance tucks her arthritic hands into her sleeves.
“The Aquilo settlement was an experiment, isolated from Earth and its sister colonies to incentivize the development of a resource-constrained but independent outpost of human civilization. Some such experiments would surely fail, but others would rise to their full potential. Driven by necessity, we would develop innovative technologies and progress our civilization faster than we would if we relied on the homeworld. We almost did fail, of course—but we overcame. We stabilized and grew, advancing synthtechnology and terraforming by leaps and bounds.”
“What about the officers who resigned? What about fuck Earth ? You’re telling me even the Founders didn’t know?”
“Only the shipmind was fully aware of the mission parameters. As soon as the Great Silence began, it went dormant. When it briefly reactivated, two centuries ago, we learned that the binding agreement between PVK Capital and the subsidiary Starhome Exploration Group stipulates no contact for a minimum of three hundred of Aquilo’s years.
Afterward, communication may be reestablished when the colony initiates it using designated codes. ”
Isako keeps shaking her head, as if doing so could change what she’s hearing. “Why would our ancestors have ever agreed to something so fucked up?”
“We can only speculate. Perhaps they saw a long, dark period ahead for Earth and hoped to protect us. Perhaps they wanted us to prove ourselves advanced enough to rejoin them among the stars. Or perhaps”—Constance shrugs—“someone in an unmatched position of power simply decided that would be the way it was.”
“Reunionists have been seeking Earth for years . My client made it his life’s mission.” She feels as if she’s choking. “He died never knowing it was within reach.”
Constance gestures remorsefully at the projection surrounding them, the dream of a verdant world.
“We all know what heaven looks like. But we disagree bitterly on the way to get there. Sorry to say, Forest Greves would never have been an acceptable candidate to the Board of Directors. His moderate peers in Company leadership wish to see us reach the stars and rejoin the wider human civilization, eventually—but they’re pragmatic.
Reestablishing contact with the homeworld too early could be disastrous and lead to our annexation.
Reunification is best initiated on our terms from a position of strength. ”
“ What’s the point? ” Isako exclaims. “No matter the terms of the original deal, sooner or later, Earth will come looking to make use of its experiment. The Board and the Agency can’t stop that from happening forever.”
“True, most likely. But for now we have time. And with time comes progress, and power, and thus survival. Just as the airshield keeps the Vastness at bay until we no longer have to fear it.”
Isako says fiercely, “Now that you’ve told me all this, are you going to have me killed, too? Send Marsh Elias to shoot me in the head?”
“You wound me, Isa.”
“I could go to the public. To the Companynet press. I could reveal the truth to United Freelancers.”
“Be serious,” Constance admonishes. “The Companynet is managed by Workforce Relations; the director of that division sits on the Board and already knows everything you could tell him.
Rumors of signals from the homeworld have circulated for a long time, but they remain what they are: mere rumors.
Fuel for conspiracy peddlers, nothing more.
“As for the terrorists, they’ve been charged with the murder of Director Sandbar Uchi and the manufacture and use of firearms. Just before you arrived, I was on a call with Cityhab Security.
They’re asking for us to support them with three thousand additional general contractors—an enormous contract, one of the biggest in recent Agency record. ”
Compassion softens Constance’s ancient features.
“You’re an exceptional longkniveswoman, Isa, one of the Agency’s best. But you’re not a revolutionary or a whistleblower.
You don’t possess the files Martim stole from the Board, or any other form of credible evidence.
Your claims would be quashed, and they wouldn’t change anything.
There would be nothing in it for you except failure, and haven’t you suffered enough of that? ”
The truth cuts like a blade. “I admired you. You brought me into the edge life.”
“Then let me teach you something else. People aren’t meant to see the cracks in the world.
They can’t afford to, not when survival depends on believing they’re not there.
We contractors thrive on competition and instability—war and expansion, takeovers and mergers—but only so long as the Company itself is never in question.
“I understand why you’re angry,” Constance says, more gently. “Believe me, it pained me to have to take advantage of your last contract. But once you’ve calmed down, you’ll appreciate that everything that was done was necessary.”
Isako closes her hand around her crushed badge. The broken edges bite into her palm. “What happens now?”
Constance raises the pale wisps of her eyebrows. “What always happens. Life goes on. People get up, they go to work, they live their lives. The Company will weather this disruption, as it’s weathered them before.”
“What about River Thea?” Isako says.
“The midtrac who was recorporalized into that socialite’s synthbody?” A twitch of one leathery cheek. “A ronin in the worst way. That strange case is for the courts to decide.”
She can think of nothing more to say. Wordlessly, Isako lets the fragments of her badge fall from her open hand into the illusory grass. They clink and scatter as she turns and walks toward the exit.
“Isa.”
When she pauses and turns over her shoulder, she sees an aching question in her mentor’s aged eyes.
“There are only two ways for people like us to be satisfied in the end. We choose death, or we choose power. Now you know where power leads.” Constance reaches out her hands.
“This need not be the end of the road for you, Quickblade. Far from it. You’re still young and have much to learn, but what I’ve said before remains true: You could become an excellent Partner. ”
Up close, the projection of the idyllic scenery fails; Isako can see the structure of the illusion, the way the beauty is made of so many pixels on large, flat surfaces.
This room, where she’s been tested with violence many times, where she’s died every visit yet come back to life over and over again—is offering up one final question.
She liked it better before.
“I can’t stay here with you, Constance. I don’t care for the view.” She goes through the doors without looking back again at her mentor, standing serene and alone in the center of her box of dreams and nightmares.