it.”
“You’re talking about the civil war.” Kai nodded. “I have friends back home who wonder if that’s where we’re headed, too. In so many ways, your society is far advanced. But I guess some things don’t change.”
Justen turned to his companion with a knowing look. “Actually, about that. Most here won’t recognize it, but I have medic training and couldn’t help but notice. Your eyes . . . your reflexes. Your people still practice ERV?”
Kai started, a subtle movement, and his crystalline eyes widened. “No. Not usually. Our people don’t practice much of anything.”
They must not, if they were still using such quaint and clumsy gengineering. Extreme endogenous retroviral enhancement had been designed to push human capacity to its limits. It had caused the Reduction when it was first invented, and was better consigned to the waste bin of medical procedures, like trepanning, leeches, and systemic chemotherapy. The gengineering on Kai and the other captain, Andromeda Phoenix, was like looking at something out of an ancient history text.
Or a project that would flunk even an intro gengineering class.
“We don’t do much in the way of science back home,” the visitor added. “The things you have here are like something out of a dream. Those palmports look like magic.”
Justen made a face. “They’re an appalling perversion of science. Wasteful. Dangerous.” No one yet knew the long-term effects that their nutrient leeching could have on the system. You couldn’t fix everything with a supplement or two. Then again, who was he to talk? He regularly railed against palmports and genetemps, but it was his own achievements that had caused the most damage.
Kai chuckled. “Where I come from, it’s the . . . well, I guess you’d call them the aristos who disdain science. It’s strange to hear it from a Post’s mouth.”
“A Post?”
“A . . . what do you call yourself? Regular? Reg?” Kai shrugged. “Same thing. We say Post-Reductionist, or Post. The ERV was . . . a desperate move. My friends and I—we had very little choice. We needed to escape, and we needed enhancements to do it. Elliot is still terrified that we’ve single-handedly brought back the Reduction.” He shook his head, frowning. “She’s—you’d call her an aristo, I guess? Except not like the aristos here. They don’t seem to have anything against technology.”
Justen frowned. It was
Kai looked away. “Not in so many words. Elliot . . . doesn’t like to use so many words. But I know her, and I know she must be.”
Justen smiled, the medic to the patient. “Well, you can tell her not to worry. You’re a natural reg, right? That means your neurostructure has already bypassed the architecture of Reduction. ERV shouldn’t undo that. But if you like, I can do some tests. If you’re vulnerable, you can just take the Helo Cure and your offspring should be fine.” There were no supplies of the cure lying around anymore, of course, but it was simple enough to compound a dose. The formula was universally known. If he were in Galatea, he could probably find some stock in the storage rooms of the royal labs along with the rest of Persistence Helo’s belongings.
Except for the oblets he’d stolen, of course.
Kai laughed again, incredulous. “The things you say—I can’t believe you’re so casual about it. Where I come from, they hardly believe in surgery, let alone biotechnology.”
“You sound like you lived in the Dark Ages.”
“I did.” Kai pointed at Tomorrow. “Back home, there are hundreds of thousands just like her. They’re born and live and die in slavery, and there’s no other choice for them.”
Choice. What an interesting thought. Justen wondered if Tomorrow, offered the choice of the cure, would choose to take it. There was nothing in the histories of Reduced refusing the cure. Of even being given the option. He did recall reading about debates among natural regs with Reduced siblings about waiting, worrying that the cure was a second-rate solution to the regularity they were sure was going to come to their family within the next generation. Worrying that it might even set them back. He also recalled reading in the histories protests on estates where aristos forced even the natural-born regs to take the cure.
At any rate, it had no known effect on those who weren’t Reduced. Persistence Helo took the cure herself as a publicity stunt to show it was harmless to regs.
“Here on . . .” Kai faltered.
“New Pacifica,” Justen offered.
“On New Pacifica,” Kai said, amused, “you’ve cured everyone and ended the Reduction. But if we took your cure back to our homeland, it would be a battle to get it to the Reduced.”
“It was a battle here, too,” said Justen. “And it was only the first of many.”
Kai looked around him. “This place seems like paradise.”
Justen nodded. “Yes.
PERSIS HAD SPENT THE last few months as a spy and the last week as the admirer of Galatea’s most celebrated mad scientist. But today, she played tour guide, taking the single aristo among the visitors for a trip around her estate. Apparently back in her homeland, Chancellor Boatwright—whose name was actually Elliot North—owned one estate and managed another, despite being an unmarried teenage girl. From Elliot’s descriptions, Persis gathered the visitor’s holdings were almost half as large as Albion.
It shouldn’t be Persis this young woman was talking to. It should be Isla.
“Now, Chancellor, if you look down there, you’ll see the fleet of fishing boats. This should be especially interesting to you given your family’s traditions.”
Elliot said nothing, but peered politely over the side of the skimmer and down the pali. “Is your diet mostly fish?”
These days, Persis’s diet was mostly palmport supplements. “We’re islanders, Chancellor. Of course we eat a lot of seafood.”
All day long, Elliot had seemed very concerned with how the people of Scintillans—and of New Pacifica in general—ate. Persis had never thought as much about food production in her life as she had today. No one starved in New Pacifica. She had a difficult time imagining anyone living the way these visitors claimed to, with coal stoves and gas lanterns and hardly enough food to sustain the fields of Reduced slaves that labored in rags and died in their thirties. Practically all the visitors were wearing rags, especially this Elliot, who was supposed to be the highest born of all of them. Persis had offered them new clothes, but Elliot in particular had seemed scandalized by what Persis had considered very conservative garments.
“It’ll be high summer back home,” Elliot said wistfully, looking out over the fishing village and the fields that lay beyond. “My lands lie along the sea as well, but our islands are not quite so . . . lush.”
“Do you miss your estate?” Persis asked politely. It was the most she’d heard Elliot speak in one go since they’d started out that morning, and she didn’t want to scare the other girl.
“Yes,” Elliot said. “I miss it desperately, but”—the older girl took a breath—“I spent four years missing Kai, and wishing I’d gone with him the last time he left us. So this time I made the other decision.” She looked at Persis and her eyes shone. “And it was the right one. For four years, I’d hoped I could do something for the people who live on my estate. And now I can do so much more than I ever would have even with the changes I’d made on my farm. Now we know there is a cure. It’s all Kai could have hoped.”
“Captain Wentforth,” Persis said. So far, their nonverbal communication and instant alliance on every issue had been the dominant personality traits she’d noticed in Kai and Elliot. Even the other captain, Andromeda, seemed powerless to argue against their combined force. “He chose that name himself, I hear?”
Elliot chuckled. “Yes. That’s what Posts do, where I’m from.”
Persis nodded. “It was a bit of a trend here among the regs before the cure as well. I’m named for one who did that. Persistence Helo, who invented the cure.”
“Justen’s grandmother, right?” Elliot looked impressed. “And he’s a medic, too, just like her.”
“Not entirely,” was all Persis could trust herself to say.
They rode in silence for a few moments. “So . . .” Elliot began, “you don’t do much farming on this estate?”
“Not this one, no,” said Persis, “but I can arrange for you to tour others if agriculture is what interests you.”
