At The Edge Of Space (Hanan Rebellion) by C. J. Cherryh Read Free Book Online

for the moment welcome, part of a familiar frame of reference. Elas faded in this place of metal and synthetics.
    He fought it back into focus.
    “Welcome back,” she bade him, and sank into the nearest chair, gestured him welcome to the other. “Elas wants you,” she advised him then. “I am impressed.”
    “And I,” he said, “would like to go back to Elas.”
    “I did not promise that,” she said. “But your presence there has not proved particularly troublesome.” She rose again abruptly, went to the cabinet against the near wall, opened it. “Care for a drink, Mr. Morgan?”
    “Anything,” he said, “thank you.”
    She poured them each a little glass and brought one to him. It was telise. She sat down again, leaned back and sipped at her own. “Let me make a few points clear to you,” she said. “First: this is my city; I intend it should remain so. Second: this is a nemet city, and that will remain so too. Our species has had its chance. It’s finished. We’ve done it. Pylos, my world Aeolus—both cinders. It’s insane. I spend these last months waiting to die for not following orders, wondering what would become of the nemet when the probe ship returned with the authority and the firepower to deal with me. So I don’t mourn them much. I—regret Aeolus. But your intervention was timely, for the nemet. That does not mean,” she added, “that I have overwhelming gratitude to you.”
    “It does not make sense,” he said, “that we two should carry on the war here. There’s nothing either of us has to win.”
    “Is it required,” she asked, “that a war make sense? Consider ours: we’ve been at it two thousand years. Probably everything your side and mine says about its beginning is a lie. That hardly matters. There’s only the now, and the war feeds on its own casualties. And we approach our natural limits. We started out destroying ships in one little system, now we destroy worlds. Worlds. We leave dead space behind us. We count casualties by zones. We Hanan—we never were as numerous or as prolific as you; we can’t produce soldiers fast enough to replace the dead. Embryonics, lab-born soldiers, engineered officers, engineered followers—our last hope. And you killed it. I will tell you, my friend, something I would be willing to wager your Alliance never told you: you just stepped up the war by what you did at Aeolus. I think you made a great miscalculation.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “Aeolus was the center, the great center of the embryonics projects. Billions died in its laboratories. The workers, the facilities, the records—irreplaceable. You have hurt us too much. The Hanan will cease to restrict targets altogether now. The final insanity, that is what I fear you have loosed on humanity. I do much fear. And we richly deserve it, the whole human race.”
    “I don’t think,” he said, for she disturbed his peace of mind, “that you enjoy isolation half as much as you pretend.”
    “I am Aeolid,” she said. “Think about it.”
    It took a moment. Then the realization set in, and revulsion, gut-deep: of all things Hanan that he loathed, the labs were the most hateful.
    Djan smiled. “Oh, I’m human, of human cells. And superior—I would have been destroyed otherwise; efficiently engineered—for intelligence, and trained to serve the state. My intelligence then advised me that I was being used, and I disliked that. So I found my moment and turned on the state.” She finished the drink and set it aside. “But you wouldn’t like separation from humanity. Good. That may keep you from trying to cut my throat.”
    “Am I free to leave, then?”
    “Not so easily, not so easily. I had considered perhaps giving you quarters in the Afen. There are rooms upstairs, only accessible from here. In such isolation you could do no possible harm. Instinct—something—says that would be the best way to dispose of you.”
    “Please,” he said, rationally, shamelessly, for he had