Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

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ANALOG choice she’d had to make. She could have claimed her true name. It was her right. She could have seized back the life of Mika Brennan, but she’d chosen not to. I felt a shy touch against my arm and looked down, surprised to see that Shay had followed me. “She’s the version of me that my parents know. She’s the one my brothers and sisters love. She’s the mother of my children. For thirty years we’ve grown apart, and it’s too late now to ever put us back together.” Shay was right, of course. A ghost can join its memories to its progenitor, but only for a while. As they grow apart, it becomes impossible to meld one mind with another. But in the Commonwealth, individuals are allowed only one physical copy of themselves. “If I took back my name,” Shay said, “I’d take her life away. Do you think my family would even want me if I could do a thing like that?” “You know it doesn’t work that way,” I told her. We all want to see shades of meaning in what we do, but Commonwealth law is absolute. It’s concerned with limits, not justice. “You were first,” I said. “She was second. Under the law, that makes her an illegal copy.” “No, she was approved. There was a legal certification.” “Based on the assumption of your death, but you’re not dead. She’s the backup, so you have precedence. You knew it. That’s why you decided to disappear.” Shay stared out at the sprawl of gleaming towers and the canyon’s seemingly infinite walls. Kiel came to stand on her other side. He took her hand. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked me—that same question she’d met me with when I first came in the door. Only this time, there was steel in her voice, the stern conviction of a woman who’d survived out in the dark, alone. “I gave Mika my life. I didn’t ask for it back. I just wanted my own.” “And Officer Pana gave it to you.” “He’s a good cop,” Kiel said. “With a reputation for playing fair. Not like the jackboot cops of the inner system.” I wasn’t going to argue. Pana had done a better job than me. Sometimes, being a good cop means knowing when to stop asking questions. I’d been so determined to prove that Pana had been paid off, I’d followed this case too far. If I reported what I knew, the life of Mika Brennan, resident of Eden-2, would be forfeit as an illegal copy of a living person. And when she was gone, Shay would be tried and convicted of counterfeiting her identity, and she would be executed for it. Hardly a just reward for what she’d been through, and what she’d given up. I drew a breath and let it out slowly. “The radiation out there in the dark,” I said. “It damages the DNA. The repair programs . . . sometimes it seems like they’re copying patterns from the wrong DNA source.” “Like a cousin or something?” Kiel asked tentatively. “Even a sibling?” “Like that,” I agreed. Daoud Pana had known the truth, I didn’t doubt it, and he’d chosen to let Shay through the station gate because it was the right thing to do. Now I’d entered into his conspiracy. I turned and walked back across the hotel room. The door opened at my touch. I felt my connection restored. Looking back at Shay and Kiel, I saw they were still standing together on the balcony. “Thank you for answering my questions,” I said. “Assessments such as this one help us maintain the integrity of our officers. My report will state that, based on the evidence, Daoud Pana followed procedure and made the right call. This case is closed.” I took a step into the hall before I thought to turn back. “And welcome to the Commonwealth, Shay Antigo. I think you’ll like it here.” “Better than the rocks,” she allowed, in whispery relief. I nodded and went on my way. In my mind I started composing my report. I would have liked to open it with the truth: that strange things happen out in the dark. But I don’t want anyone else to get curious and start digging into this story . . . not until the law is changed—and that will happen. It must. ■ Editor’s Note: This story is a sequel to “Nahiku West.” (October, 2012) 66 LINDA NAGATA
The story so far: The planet meets no one’s idea of paradise. Its gravity is oppressive and its climate cold. Oxygen is thin and the carbon-dioxide level is almost toxic.The terrain is bleak beneath sunlight scarcely half as bright as on Earth, and the local biota have yet to make the great leap to land. For several good reasons, Blake Westford has named this world Dark. Blake and wife Rikki Westford fly a shuttle from orbiting starship Endeavour to the first landing on Dark.Without experience how weather works here, they’re taken by surprise by a blizzard.And an avalanche ... Fade to almost seventy years earlier ... Blake, a ship’s engineer, and ship’s captain Dana McElwain, on a test flight in the Asteroid Belt, are urgently summoned home to Mars. Police impound Clermont, the ship Blake and Dana operate for Bradbury University.The police deliver Blake, Dana, and their passenger, aerospace engineer Dr. Jumoke Boro, to the planetary governor’s residence.Astrophysicist Dr. Antonio Valenti explains that two co-orbiting neutron stars Dark Secret Part III of IV Edward M. Lerner “Those who do not learn from history . . .” But there’s a lot of history to choose from are at best a few years from spiraling into each other.Their cataclysmic collision will produce a gamma-ray burst. Or, rather, this has already happened, and lethal radiation will be following close behind the tell-tale gravitational waves.The GRB will obliterate life across the solar system. Working in secrecy lest the doomed populations panic, colony ships will be built using Jumoke’s Dark Energy Drive. But the DED is experimental at best. Clermont, into which the prototype drive has been installed and integrated, needs lots more check-out. Only Dana and Blake are trained to fly the ship and work out the DED’s bugs.As soon as the DED is made reliable, they’ll scout the path ahead to another star.They agree—if Blake’s wife can join them. As the distant neutron stars entered their death spiral, the gravitational waves intensified—ending all ambiguity. In months, not years, the GRB will arrive.There’s no time to complete any colony ships. Humanity’s last hope of avoiding extinction is Clermont.Neil Hawthorne, the governor’s aide, arrives at the spaceport where Blake and Dana oversee 67
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