'Of course we do. Did we lie to you about that? We told you that it was a hard job to fill, and that was how you could fulfill your obligation with the least time commitment. The training and the job would have benefited both society and you. Is that wrong?'
'You make it so cold ... that's wrong. People aren't just numbers.'
'Every human being who ever lived who wasn't a hermit has been a nanite in his or her society. Some have been important nanites; some have been almost superfluous. The greatest danger to a developing society, one that hopes to progress and improve itself and its members, is pandering to self-idolatry. Fostering an illusion of caring is a form of self-idolatry, and it's been tried, and it fails, unless you're talking about a static society where the idolatry is used to reinforce the status quo.'
Cerrelle had said something similar, but I'd passed it off.
'She was probably too gentle with you,' Andra said. 'She was trying to be honest without dropping you into the cold vacuum of reality.'
'Reality? Caring is real. People do care. Why do you insist that's wrong?'
'Tyndel... you're twisting my words. People should care about others. But when you talk about the survival of a society or the human race, you don't change principles that work because of one individual. Each individual believes his or her circumstances are unique, and they are. If we threw out our principles every time they impacted one individual harder than another, then we'd have no society. In a way, that was what happened in Amnord. I won't retell that, but if you're interested you can find it in the histories available through your screen. Even Dzin follows our principles. Don't tell me that you don't create the impression that acceptance of the way of Dzin isn't necessary. Isn't that just another form of saying that society's principles, even in Dorcha, come ahead of an individual's needs and pain?'
I looked down at the polished gray stone floor tiles.
'You can go back to Dorcha at any time,' Andra reminded me.
I recalled hearing the same words at the adjudication hearings. 'I won't be a needle jockey,' I said firmly.
'That's your choice. If you don't want to go through training, then you'll be a low-level technician and cargo handler on one of the more dangerous orbit stations.'
'What if I won't do that?'
'We'll find another way for you to repay your debt. That would mean adjudication. Do you really want that?'
'No.' I didn't have to think about that. The last thing I wanted was another batch of nanites in my head, monitoring and regulating everything I did or didn't do.
'There might be some hope for you... someday.' Her eyes strayed once more to the window, to the free-flying seabird unchained by digits and cold reason.
Hope? Not if it meant being like Cerrelle and Andra, there wasn't.
That I knew already.
22
To oppose is to maintain what one opposes.
Andra wasted no time.
That afternoon I was escorted toward a long paved strip -permacrete, insisted my recently acquired database before I pushed the term away - that ran for more than two kilos eastward from behind the logistics area and partly out into the marsh. The winter-browned grasses that flanked the strip swayed in the cold breeze that carried the odor of salt and mud. From my left hand swung a single small duffel bag, pale green, not even half full.
There's your orbit shuttle,' the strawberry blonde announced, gesturing toward a sleek gray craft with stub wings that stood on the tarmac. Magshuttle - the identification came unbidden.
The craft was scarcely mine, not even by desire. I followed Andra to the ramp that extended from behind the stub wings, and then up it, noticing the pitted and browned gray of the fuselage.
'Take one of the seats in the last two rows. Those are for low-techs, and you're definitely low-tech now. Put your duffel in one of the lockers in the back.' Andra's tone continued to hold that mixture of sadness, frustration, and regret, as if she'd failed to make me understand something basic.
My lack of understanding wasn't the problem. I understood. I just couldn't accept being pushed around for my own good. I couldn't accept that Foerga was gone and no one even cared but me. I couldn't accept that the Rykashans just expected me to go on as if nothing had happened.
I nodded at Andra and left her there. After I slipped my minimal belongings into a locker, I sat and strapped the harness around me.
Andra reappeared beside my seat. 'There will be other passengers. Someone will meet you at orbit station to get you on the right needle. You're headed for Omega Eridani on the Tailor.'
'Thank you,' I managed. There wasn't much more to say, and I didn't.
'Some real thinking wouldn't hurt, Tyndel. It would be a shame for you - not for Rykasha, but for you - to waste all that ability on self-pity.' With an abrupt nod, Andra turned and walked forward and out the shuttle door.
Self-pity? I was considered self-pitying because I was angry over losing Foerga? Because I wasn't slavering gratitude and saying Of course I'll take your needle jockey job? Just to be alive, I'll do anything you want? No matter how impossible and dangerous? I snorted to myself. I'd repay them, but more on my terms than theirs.
The section where I sat was windowless, even at the front where the apparently more desirable couch-seats were. The sides of the craft rose and joined in a seamless gray curve overhead, perhaps a meter and a half above my head. I could smell a faint odor of oil and metal mixed with the salt air that drifted through the open door.
After a time, a slender man wearing a shimmering one-piece black coverall entered and sat in the front couch-seat. Then a woman in red trousers and tunic sat across from him. Neither spoke to the other.
A man and a woman in dark gray - both well muscled - literally lifted a small, dark-haired woman into the shuttle and carried her toward me. Her hands and feet were bound with clear shimmering straps. Silently, the two strapped the woman into the seat across the aisle from me.
The female guard looked at me. 'Please don't unstrap her. You both could get hurt. They'll release her at her destination.'
'Bastards ...' hissed the bound woman to the backs of the two guards as they left. 'Think they can order folk to slave for them.'
From what I'd seen, the Rykashans could do just that. I could be a low-level slave, a high-level slave, or dead. I didn't want to die. That would still have negated everything Foerga had done. But I didn't want to reward the Rykashans by becoming a needle jockey. That left being a low-level slave, not that I was pleased with that option, either.
'They seem effective at that,' was my response.
'Bastards, all of them.'
Five people in gray-and-green uniforms trooped into the shuttle and deposited themselves in the seats behind the more colorfully dressed two in the front. One woman glanced in my direction, then at the bound woman, before shaking her head.
'Them, too,' added the bound woman.
Almost silently, the door slid shut, leaving the shuttle cabin illuminated by a pearly light diffusing from the gray walls.
'Please make sure your harnesses are fastened. We will be lifting shortly.'
The warning was not repeated, and almost immediately the craft shivered slightly and then began to slide forward, perhaps to rise as well. The silence of the craft's hover, and the smoothness of its acceleration, prompted me to search my mental dustbin of information until I confirmed the earlier unbidden identification - magfield drive.
Based on the sketchy yet voluminous information poured into me earlier, I tried to sort out an understanding. From what I could deduce, a magfield drive was a further adaptation of the glider principles, the tapping of the planetary magnetic field and its use as a basis for some form of induction propulsion - I thought.