One's Aspect to the Sun (41 page)

He found it on his datapad and sent it to her, and while the datapad performed its operations, Mother questioned Hirin closely about his condition at all stages of the virus's progress. I sat back and sipped my double caff, savouring not only the hot, sweet bite of the drink but also the fact that we could talk about Hirin's illness in the past tense.

The datapad alert announced that the analysis was finished, and Mother looked it over, frowning.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Let me check something.” She pulled a chipcase from her bag and loaded another chip into the datapad.

“Is something wrong?”

“The virus,” she said distractedly, scrolling through pages on the datapad. “There's something—it's familiar.”

Hirin and I shared a look, but said nothing. Mother studied the screen, occasionally pursing her lips and squinting at the data. The suspense was almost intolerable and I was about to speak when she abruptly got up from the table, still staring at the datapad screen. “I don't want to believe this.”

I just looked at her until she continued.

“The virus contains a gene sequence that belongs to PrimeCorp. They own the patent on it. I know because I helped create it.”

“Dr. Ndasa told me it was synthetic—engineered. That it must have been spread by accident.”

“It should have been completely destroyed when we were finished with it. It shouldn't still be in existence.” She sat down again. “And it definitely shouldn't be in Hirin.”

“So . . . you think PrimeCorp wasn't careful enough with it? Or sold it?”

She didn't answer, drumming her long fingers on the table and staring at a spot on the far wall. Finally she said, “No. It's too much of a coincidence. My guess would be that PrimeCorp deliberately exposed you to it in an attempt to find out what your bioscavengers could do.”

“But it happened here, on Vele! They would have had to follow us out here, and then find a way to infect us! And how could they do that without risking exposure for other people?”

“Maybe they didn't care. This is PrimeCorp, remember?” Hirin said. He rubbed his stubbled chin contemplatively. “It would explain some things. Like why the doctors never could pinpoint what kind of virus it was.”

“There'd be nothing obvious to link it to PrimeCorp, not for anyone who hadn't worked on the project.” She stood again and paced the length of the galley. “What did you do when Hirin first got sick?”

“We headed straight back to Earth.” I looked out the viewport, remembering those terrible days. “There were reasonably good medical facilities close by on Vileyra, but the colonies were still young. We thought the newest and best treatment would be Earthside.”

“And it kept getting worse on Earth, then regressed once you left?”

Hirin shook his head. “For a long time it was up and down. We kept trading, tried to ignore it. I'd have flare-ups, then it would calm down, just simmer for a while. Didn't seem to make a difference if I was Earthside or anywhere else in Nearspace.”

“But when you . . . reached the point where you couldn't manage the trade runs anymore?”

“It got steadily worse once I went into care,” Hirin said. “Slowly, but steadily. It didn't improve until I left Earth the last time.”

“Almost like someone was trying to make sure Luta stayed to look after you?'

I broke in. “What are you saying? That PrimeCorp—”

“Do you think it would be difficult for them to find someone in a care facility who could make sure a patient got sicker instead of better—if the price was right?”

I stared at her. When I could speak, my voice was only a whisper. “You think PrimeCorp was making sure Hirin got worse, and he started to recover when he came with me because they couldn't . . . get at him any longer? That's monstrous!”

Hirin narrowed his eyes. “But it makes sense. And it explains why they were so reluctant to let me leave. They couldn't forbid it, but they did everything short of that. Including trying to say I was crazy.”

I still didn't want to believe it. A sick churning roiled in my stomach. All this time I'd thought I was doing what was best for Hirin, and in fact I'd only been leaving him in jeopardy alone. I didn't want to accept that it might be true. “What about the Split? When the virus surged again? PrimeCorp couldn't have engineered that!”

“I can't answer that part of it, Luta,” Mother said. “It could have been something caused directly by the Split, or the virus could have been engineered to surge after a certain amount of exposure to wormhole radiation—that would be an effective way of limiting travel.”

“I'm going to have to kill him.” My voice seemed alarmingly calm, even to my ears. “Sedmamin. For doing this to you.”

Hirin took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. His blue-grey eyes were intense as they fastened on mine and his hands were strong and firm, not the weak, fragile hands of such a short time ago. “You're going to do no such thing, Luta. Listen, PrimeCorp is going to get what's coming to it. The Protectorate is going to see to that. We're going to let them take care of it, and we're not wasting any more time or worry on Sedmamin or the rest of them. This is not the beginning of a vendetta. I've been given the gift of more time, and I have better things to do with it.” He gave me a gentle shake. “Got it?”

That's when I burst into tears. I guess I got it.

Hirin told me later that Maja cried, too, when he told her about it.

I can say unequivocally that giving evidence in a proceeding before the Nearspace Worlds Administrative Council is the most boring thing I've ever done. Lanar arrived on Vele just a day before the actual hearing was due to start, and we had a nice reunion, he and I and Mother. It made for a welcome break in the monotony, because by then we'd all been interviewed, signed affidavits, turned over evidence, been interviewed about the evidence, and then been cross-interviewed about everything again by PrimeCorp's lawyers. A lot of paperwork and bland meeting rooms and hurry-up-and-wait. There were no courtroom dramas, no damning accusations from a witness stand. This was the Protectorate's show, and Lanar had done his part remotely from his ship. I would have given almost anything to simply slip away some night and burn for the nearest wormhole, but that would have solved only the boredom problem. I wanted to stay around and see how it all fell out.

And how it all fell out wasn't the most I could have hoped for, but it was pretty satisfying. The Protectorate had quite a bundle of charges, thanks to our evidence, to take to the Council. In addition to its own evidence of manufacturing and transporting illegal tech, there were the instances of piracy, kidnapping, industrial espionage, use of illegal viruses and stripped ops, and unprovoked firing upon a civilian ship.

It certainly would have been interesting to observe the proceedings, because I'm sure that delicately balanced web of interplanetary relationships throughout Nearspace that Lanar had talked about came into play—who sided with PrimeCorp and who with the Protectorate, and what political leverage was brought to bear. The media certainly gave it full play on the vids and the web (although they weren't privy to the deliberations, either, so a lot of it was speculation) and PrimeCorp's net worth valuation took a pretty deep hit. Not enough to ruin the corporation, because as Lanar had said, ruination wasn't feasible—at least not yet. They couldn't make all the charges stick, or possibly some were negotiated away. But the PrimeCorp foundations shook, no doubt about it.

Predictably, Alin Sedmamin came out smelling—if not like a rose, at least mostly free of the odour of corruption. Dores Amadoro didn't fare so well, and was facing time in prison. Sedmamin managed to sidestep most of the responsibility for the criminal activity, allowing it to land squarely on her shoulders. Somehow it came to light that all those criminal happenings had been instigated or carried out by her, acting on her own initiative. The Board of Directors was shocked—simply shocked, that such a viper had been sheltering within its walls.

I didn't believe it one bit, obviously, but I still didn't feel sorry for her. Dealing with someone like Sedmamin, she should have known he'd be the last person to take responsibility for failure.

It was Lanar who stopped by Dock One-Eleven to give me all that news. “It'll be pinging all over Nearspace tomorrow,” he said, “but I wanted you to hear it first.”

We were in the galley, in the two big armchairs facing each other, mugs of double caff in hand. It was quiet, except for a dull thumping that signalled Viss was labouring away on the repairs to Engineering.

“I'd rather hear that Sedmamin was going down,” I said, “but I'll take Amadoro as a consolation prize. Do you think they'll go after Mother when she leaks the research data?”

He shook his head. He was off-duty, and had traded his Protectorate uniform for jeans and a transform t-shirt. “If I know Mother, she'll do it in a way that won't be directly traceable to her. If anyone knows how to do that, I'm sure she does.” He grinned. “And don't be too certain about Sedmamin. His day is coming. I expect his Board of Directors is going to be very unhappy with him after this, if only because it happened on his watch.”

“Thankful for small victories,” I said, and raised my mug.

He leaned forward to touch his mug to mine. “Speaking of victories, your evidence really helped us out, Luta. No-one could argue that it was just Protectorate harassment or trumped-up charges. The Protectorate is going to be grateful. Quiet, but grateful.”

“Huh. If they'll turn that gratitude into a new, upgraded main drive, that might compensate me for my trouble.” I was still not entirely over the way Lanar had gone behind my back with Yuskeya, but I never could stay very angry with him. I changed the subject. “So I suppose you'll be wanting my navigator back now. Where am I supposed to find another one as good as Yuskeya?”

Lanar glanced away, not meeting my eyes, then back. “Actually, I want to talk to you about that. I hear you're taking Mother back to Kiando. Could I leave Yuskeya with you for that trip? I want her to meet with our agents there to—discuss a few things.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I'm suspicious already, but sure, I'll take her back. She can spend the time bringing me double caff and cinnamon
pano
to make up for lying to me.”

“I don't think that's in her job description,” he said, grinning again. “Any of them. But you can try.”

Maja knocked on the door of my cabin one evening as I was looking over cargo manifests for likely jobs. The repairs to the
Tane Ikai
were almost complete, and we'd be shipping out for Kiando soon. Might as well travel with full cargo pods, even if the Protectorate had paid for the new drive. I put the datapad aside when she came in.

She wasn't the same Maja who'd come aboard on Eri. Her blonde hair spilled down from a girlish ponytail and her blue eyes were lively. She smiled at me as she settled herself in my big armchair and tucked her feet up comfortably.

“Are you making plans for taking Grandmother back to Kiando?” she asked.

I nodded. “Looking for some likely cargo to haul on the way there, anyway. She's anxious to see Gusain Buig again, so I don't think she'll want me to make too many stops along the way.”

She licked her lips. “I've been thinking . . . I'd like to stay on for a few runs, if it's all right with you. I'm starting to think that I didn't give space travel enough of a chance when I was younger.”

“Does my communications officer have anything to do with that idea?”

She flushed slightly. “You know about that?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Maja, I'm your
mother
. And we both know why, despite my age, I'm not senile just yet.”

She laughed then, a sound I couldn't hear often enough. “Do you mind?”

“Why should I mind? Baden is a good man. He wouldn't be on my crew if I didn't think so. He does have a bit of a reputation—”

“As a womanizer. I know all about it.”

“—and I thought he and Rei had something going—”

“Baden told me about that, so I talked to Rei, too. She laughed, very nicely, and said he was 'amusing' on long runs, but that she has a fiancé back on Eri whom she'll be marrying 'when he's old enough.'” Maja raised her eyebrows. “What's that about?”

Sankta merdo!
I'd known the crew had secrets, but the ones I'd learned lately were not what I'd expected. “I have no idea, and nothing you or anyone else does is any of my business. I can't keep track of it, anyway. So yes, I'd be very happy if you stayed with us for awhile, and so would your father. There's a lot in Nearspace I'd like you to see.”

She leaned her head back against the chair. “I had a nice talk with Grandmother, too, today. I thought at first I'd feel angry with her, since she was really the beginning of all this. But I don't.” She took a deep breath and looked around my cabin thoughtfully. “Everything I worried about for so long seems to be awfully far away now. And everything important is right here.”

I smiled. “That's a good thing.”

She nodded. “That,” she said, “is a very good thing.”

Weeks later, back on Kiando, Mother and I took a long walk together, a real outdoors walk through some of the vineyards where the fruit for
jarlees
wine grew. They were reminiscent of vineyards on earth, although the
jarlee
vines grew over tall, arching trellises and sported pale, burgundy-veined leaves. Anyone seeing us would think we were sisters, not mother and daughter, and I was thinking about how alike we were, and how alike Maja and I were also turning out to be.