Following the incident at Dr. Gupta’s lab, I spend several days in the hospital. Dr. Citali manages everything about my care and ends up with a huge pile of research notes. When she’s not checking readings or elsewhere in the building running labs, she’s at the corner table in my room, tapping at the Data Haven laptop or scribbling by hand. The constant whirring of its fan indicates that the GPU is hard at work running simulations or building models or whatever it is that the Stepdaughters of Chiron needed compute power for.
Cleve’s briar beast scratches are all looking much better. I feel quite recovered, too, though you wouldn’t think so from how the medical staff still treats me. Or Xiao, for that matter. When he finally comes to visit on the third morning, he’s wearing a surgical mask and lab gloves with his uniform. He hands me a thin vase of native flowers but then quickly steps back away from me. Does he think I’m contagious? “The purple sparkles were safe,” I tell him as I admire this new plant. These are legitimate flowers, small white bells with yellow pollen-covered stamens hanging off deep green stems and accompanied by similarly dark leaves.
“What? Oh, yeah, I’m sure they’re fine,” Xiao says. “I just want to make sure not to infect you, since you were pretty grievously injured.”
Cleve sits up straighter. “Infect him with what?”
“Thanks for the consideration,” I tell Xiao. “Are you sick?”
“I don’t think so, no. I feel pretty much fine.”
“Is there something going around?” Cleve asks, sounding more alarmed now.
“It’s just better to play it safe,” Xiao says. “You’re in a hospital. I don’t want to get other people sick. I don’t want other people to get you sick. Basic precaution.” Marina doesn’t bat an eye at Xiao’s explanations. This must just be his cautious nature coming out in a way we haven’t observed before. “I’m glad to see you’re doing better, but definitely don’t overexert yourself,” he cautions me.
“Well, there are things we need to do,” I say. Our conference with Deirdre has yet to be rescheduled.
“I understand. But one thing at a time.” Xiao takes a breath as though steeling himself and then carefully says, “I’ve arranged a meeting with the rangers.” His eyes flick from me to Cleve. “I think that we can smooth out some things over there. I don’t know how much control we’ll be able to exercise over them, but that’s something we’d like to hold in reserve, should this go poorly.” At my look of confusion, he elaborates, “I’d rather not coerce them into complying with, for example, any restitution they owe you for any extra-judicial powers they’ve been exercising.”
I’m uncomfortable with how this is sounding. “Are you lumping Dr. Gupta in with them still, even though she was retired? Are you holding them at fault? I understand one of them stole something from the scene, but that doesn’t mean that they as an organization are liable for Dr. Gupta’s independent actions.”
“We don’t know to what extent she was still collaborating with them,” Xiao tells me.
“Okay, so that’s a thing to find out,” I say. “I just don’t want people to go in starting from a position of laying blame.” Xiao agrees that this is exactly why he arranged a meeting with the rangers. However, he wants me to focus on recovery and just Cleve to accompany them. Since they’re a paramilitary group, Cleve’s background might help.
“When have you got this arranged?” Cleve asks.
“Today would be preferable,” Xiao answers.
Cleve looks at me, concern plastered all over his face, and then he turns to Marina. “Can you stay with Mariah?”
“Yeah, I’m not going anywhere for a while. I’m still compiling a lot of data.” She sighs. “Just trying to figure out what that serum was about.”
“It’s up to you,” Cleve says to me.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine,” I say waving him to the door. “Nobody’s so much as crashed through the window in the last three days.” I know I asked him to stay with me before we came to the hospital, but I was pretty frazzled at that point. The only thing even approaching a threat I’ve experienced since we got here was Sal’s visit, and that was resolved peacefully—even if it ended with me being appointed divine matchmaker. “And if you run into any trouble, you can send a Bella-gram.” Cleve’s shimmerfly friend has been hanging out with us here, too. I’m not sure how much of the time she’s been around, but whenever we mention her, she catches our eye with her shimmery wings.
Mind made up, Cleve gets down to business. “So, do you have any sway with the rangers or just the mariners?” he asks Xiao.
“I have sway with the mariners. I have no sway with the rangers,” Xiao replies.
¡Ay! What is wrong with this place? Deirdre, too, has claimed not to have influence. What’s the point of even being on the council here? “Hey, you are one of the five leaders of this society!” I object.
“Yes, I’m one of the council members,” Xiao acknowledges. “That’s all the sway I hold. But the rangers don’t have a representative on the council; they’re not a numerically significant faction.”
So what? I’m not asking him to chat with a peer. “I understand that this is not a dictatorship, but you all were elected by the populace to institute order, weren’t you?”
“To complete a very narrow set of responsibilities for society,” Xiao corrects me.
“Oh, so what is that set of responsibilities, then?”
“One of them is mediating disputes among citizens. Doing so with foreign dignitaries hasn’t really come up before. We’re just hesitant about the nature of police forces. We know they caused a lot of trouble on Earth, so we’re trying to avoid that.”
“This isn’t just about your own personal sense of responsibility. This is an authority you all on the council should have. The rangers might not have a rep on the council, but they’re citizens, aren’t they?” Everyone on that council should be doing the best they can for everyone in the Stepdaughters of Chiron. I have only the vaguest idea of how ships work, but I try for an analogy nonetheless. “When you are out at sea and everyone on the ship is depending on you…” Ugh, that’s going nowhere. “Xiao, I’ve been in your office. You are so organized. All the charts and the to-do lists… If you could just apply that same level of confidence to the societal responsibilities you have, you could really move things in a direction to make the future more stable.”
“These rangers are either part of the society, or they’re not,” Cleve observes. “They need to get in line. If a ship’s going down, everyone bails water.” Xiao blinks, looking at us both. Okay, so maybe the uneducated sea-talk is falling flat here.
“Ah, it’s sort of like being on a ship,” Xiao allows. “That’s a much narrower scope of people and wider scope of responsibility. But perhaps you are right. I want to make sure that stability isn’t the only goal. Human happiness and compatibility with the planet is really our goal. But perhaps we’ve been too loose in this specific instance.”
“Are they part of the Stepdaughters of Chiron or not?” Cleve asks bluntly. “Are we dealing with a separate entity that we need to treat with?”
“There’s not enough of them for that. There’s only maybe two dozen rangers in total. They’re a significant fighting force, not political one. Not a lot of people in the Stepdaughters of Chiron like to employ violence. It’s in our constitution: we abhor violence and only use it as a last resort.”
“Wait—there’s a constitution?” I ask. This is the first I’ve heard mention of any such compact. That would have been useful to read before trying to interface with the government here.
“Yes, of course we have a constitution!” Xiao says, sounding as shocked by my question as I was by his statement. Then his voice grows more concerned. “Do you not have a constitution in Data Haven?” He looks from me to Cleve. I just shrug.
Cleve pulls out his notebook and starts scribbling, muttering, “I’ll put that on the list.” To Xiao, he says, “We only just got a government. I don’t think our society is quite as mature as yours. Violence hasn’t yet come up internally.” It’s true we haven’t had any kidnappings, but there was certainly theft going on, with Astrid stealing rations. But could her plans really be considered a coup, if there was no government to begin with? She wasn’t trying to usurp power, just seize it. Which I guess is what Cleve actually did do.
“Well, I see this has already been a very helpful diplomatic exchange about how to run each of our societies,” Xiao says with a smirk.
Yeah, none of us here are perfect. We’re all trying to do the best we can. Cleve stands up and then throws a look of consideration at the weapon leaning against the wall next to his chair. “I’m curious to see if they take responsibility for this or take responsibility for her,” he says.
“They shouldn’t, but they recognize that she was a ranger,” Xiao replies. “They have weird customs.”
“Has her body been released to them yet?” I ask, wondering if that’s what he’s referring to.
“I brought her body to them yesterday for their burial rites. There may have been a memorial service, but I didn’t see it. I was, however, able to negotiate with them to get a proper meeting with the foreign emissaries.”
“Just remember that they don’t actually have anything of mine anymore,” I tell Cleve.
“True,” he acknowledges. “We did recover the sample,” he tells Xiao plainly.
“Oh my gosh, did you already break in and break out!? What kind of service were you in back on Earth, Cleve?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Cleve says. He gestures at a seemingly empty corner of the room. “This is my little friend Bella.” Ah, that’s where she flitted off to. I see her now, particularly the little ribbon she wears around one leg. “She’s a very smart girl, and she’s able to retrieve things that belong to us,” he explains.
“She gets in and out of places very easily,” I add.
Xiao pulls out a little notepad from his back pocket and jots something down. “You two are a bundle of surprises,” he says.
So the current situation is that we have no proof that that ranger stole anything—Bella isn’t going to take a witness stand—nor do the rangers have what was stolen. So hopefully there will be no new conflict. “The goal will mainly be to smooth things over with them and make sure they don’t have any connection to Dr. Gupta’s research,” Xiao says.
Not allowed to come myself, I give my list of priorities. “One, I don’t want this happening to anybody else. If Dr. Gupta is the only one who was responsible and she’s dead, then there isn’t a danger of that. Assuming, of course, that her employees are not of a similar mindset.” As I say this, my eyes flick over to Marina, who is lost in her analyses and doesn’t appear to be tracking this conversation. There are some disturbingly similar habits between Dr. Gupta and Dr. Citali, though Marina’s ethical standpoint seems firmer. Usually. “So, finding out for sure that the rangers are not at all culpable is a good thing.” Xiao nods.
“But two,” I continue, “there’s an army coming. If the rangers are the only people here who know anything about violence, they need to be part of the discussion of what sort of opposition the Stepdaughters are going to present to Morgan Industries.”
“Understood,” Xiao tells me. “So perhaps we should also discuss tactics with them,” he tells Cleve. “Ensure we’re all on the same side and they’re not an independent, unknown actor in this conflict.”
“And if there needs to be any sort of…” I sigh, not really liking how this sounds, “citizen volunteer defense force of your own, somebody’s going to have to train them.”
“We can’t conscript people,” Xiao immediately says. “I know you said volunteer, but a lot of armies throughout history have said they were voluntary when they were not.”
“Some people here will want to defend what they have,” I tell Xiao. At the very least, Sal’s preaching has primed some of their cultists to sign up for violent action in defense of Chiron.
“Yes, we can certainly put out a call for volunteers,” Xiao says. “Cleve, did you have any experience with that back on Earth? Did you do any recruiting?”
Cleve’s answer is far from affirmative; his unit had an office for that, though he wasn’t employed there. Still, it’s more experience than anyone else here has. And if nothing else, he’s worked with fresh recruits out on deployments. “I never dealt with that specifically,” he concludes, “but if an army shows up on your doorstep, being prepared is much better than not.”
Xiao shares that the mariners are also developing an evacuation plan. “If it comes to it, and we don’t have the forces we need to sustain our way of life here, we will have to find somewhere else.” There are a number of outlying islands with small settlements and outposts to which people can flee. The Garden of Chiron has far more people than can fit on the small fleet all at once, so setting priorities and working out a staggered plan is essential.
Cleve gives a sharp nod at the wisdom of that and observes, “Unilateral decision-making is not a good idea at this point for any group. Whether that’s how many samples we want to take from Mariah or independent curiosity, which also seems to be a problem. I think it’s in everybody’s best interest if the Stepdaughters of Chiron act as a cohesive unit across all of the different, individual groups.”
“Yes,” Xiao agrees. “And once you’re feeling better,” he says to me, “we can convene the whole council and put together a plan about what this alliance is and how we’re going to stand up to Morgan and take him down.”
With that reminder that I’m sentenced to stay behind, I put on a bright face and say, “Have fun, Cleve!”
“Should I bring my rifle?”
“You can bring it if you want,” Xiao says slowly. “I don’t think it’s going to be an issue. But please don’t carry it at the ready.”
“Understood.”
“There have not been any other rogue briar beast sightings in town,” he assures Cleve. “Which is actually unfortunate, because they were part of our defensive force and now we’ve lost that capability.”
“You know, better now than when Morgan’s army rolls through town,” Cleve counters. “They were not defensive; they were a problem, and they were not under control. You don’t want out-of-control briar beasts while you’re trying to evacuate.”
Xiao shrugs. “It depends.” Having grown up in the Garden of Chiron, he doesn’t see briar beasts as the unruly menace that Cleve does. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s already happened, so it is what it is,” he says, not wanting to place blame on us for destroying part of their defenses.
“Hopefully we can slow them down before they get this far,” Cleve says.
“We might see about training some new briar beasts.” Xiao glances over at Marina as he says this. She knows how to do it. “But I understand if that’s not a topic you’d like to engage with,” he tells Cleve. “And that’s fine! Because that’s an internal Stepdaughters of Chiron discussion.”