Mazer in Prison Read online

  "I brought your grandchildren with me," she was saying. "Pahu Rangi hasn't found a woman yet who will let him reproduce." She grinned wickedly at someone out of frame. Her brother. Mazer's son. Just a baby, conceived on his last leave before the final battle.

  "We've told the children all about you. I know you can't see them all at once, but if they each come into frame with me for just a few moments -- it's so generous of them to let me --

  "But he said that you might not be happy to see me. Even if that's true, Father, I know you'll want to see your grandchildren. They'll still be alive when you return. I might even be. Please don't hide from us. We know that when you divorced Mother it was for her sake, and ours. We know that you never stopped loving us. See? Here's Kahui Kura. And Pao Pao Te Rangi. They also have English names, Mirth and Glad, but they're proud to be children of the Maori. Through you. But your grandson Mazer Taka Aho Howarth insists on using the name you went ... go by. And as for baby Struan Maeroero, he'll make the choice when he gets older." She sighed. "I suppose he's our last child, if the New Zealand courts uphold the Hegemony's new population rules."

  As each of the children stepped into frame, shyly or boldly, depending on their personality, Mazer tried to feel something toward them. Two daughters first, shy, lovely. The little boy named for him. Finally the baby that someone held into the frame.

  They were strangers, and before he ever met them they would be parents themselves. Perhaps grandparents. What was the point? I told your mother that we had to be dead to each other. She had to think of me as a casualty of war, even if the paperwork said Divorce Decree instead of Killed in Action.

  She was so angry she told me that she would rather I had died. She was going to tell our children that I was dead. Or that I just left them, without giving them any reason, so they'd hate me.

  Now it turns out she turned my departure into a sentimental memory of sacrifice for God and country. Or at least for planet and species.

  Mazer forced himself not to wonder if this meant that she had forgiven him. She was the one with children to raise -- what she decided to tell them was none of his business. Whatever helped her raise the children without a father.

  He didn't marry and have children until he was already middle-aged -- he'd been afraid to start a family when he knew he'd be gone on voyages lasting years at a time. Then he met Kim, and all that rational process went out the window. He wanted -- his DNA wanted -- their children to exist, even if he couldn't be there to raise them. Pai Mahutanga and Pahu Rangi -- he wanted the children's lives to be stable and good, rich with opportunity, so he stayed in the service in order to earn the separation bonuses that would pay to put them through college.

  Then he fought in the war to keep them safe. But he was going to retire when the war ended and go home to them at last, while they were still young enough to welcome a father. And then he got this assignment.

  Why couldn't you just decide, you bastards? Decide you were going to replace me, and then let me go home and have my hero's welcome and then retire to Christchurch and listen to the ringing of the bells to tell me God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. You could have left me home with my family, to raise my children, to be there so I could talk Pai out of naming her firstborn son after me.

  I could have given all the advice and training you wanted -- more than you'd ever use, that's for sure -- and then left the fleet and had some kind of life. But no, I had to leave everything and come out here in this miserable box while you dither.

  Mazer noticed that Pai's face was frozen and she was making no sound. "You stopped the playback," said Mazer.

  "You weren't paying attention," said the computer. "This is a visual ansible transmission, and you are required to --"

  "I'm watching now," said Mazer.

  Pai's voice came again, and the visual moved again. "They're going to slow this down to transmit it to you. But you know all about time dilation. The bandwidth is expensive, too, so I guess I'm done with the visual part of this. I've written you a letter, and so have the kids. And Pahu swears that someday he'll learn to read and write." She laughed again, looking at someone out of frame. It had to be his son, the baby he had never seen. Tantalizingly close, but not coming into frame. Someone was controlling that. Someone decided not to let him see his son. Graff? How closely was he manipulating this? Or was it Kim who decided? Or Pahu himself?

  "Mother has written to you, too. Actually, quite a few letters. She wouldn't come, though. She doesn't want you to see her looking so old. But she's still beautiful, Father. More beautiful than ever, with white hair and -- she still loves you. She wants you to remember her younger. She told me once, 'I was never beautiful, and when I met a man who thought I was, I married him over his most heartfelt objections.'"

  Her imitation of her mother was so accurate that it stopped Mazer's breath for a moment. Could it truly be that Kim had refused to come because of some foolish vanity about how she looked? As if he would care!

  But he would care. Because she would be old, and that would prove that it was true, that she would surely be dead before he made it back to Earth. And because of that, it would not be home he came back to. There was no such place.

  "I love you, Father," Pai was saying. "Not just because you saved the world. We honor you for that, of course. But we love you because you made Mother so happy. She would tell us stories about you. It's as if we knew you. And your old mates would visit sometimes, and then we knew that Mother wasn't exaggerating about you. Either that or they all were." She laughed. "You have been part of our lives. We may be strangers to you, but you're not a stranger to us."

  The image flickered, and when it came back, she was not in quite the same position. There had been an edit. Perhaps because she didn't want him to see her cry. But he knew she had been about to, because her face still worked before weeping the same way as when she was little. It had not been so very long, for him, since she was small. He remembered very well.

  "You don't have to answer this," she said. "Lieutenant Graff told us that you might not welcome this transmission. Might even refuse to watch it. We don't want to make your voyage harder. But Father, when you come home -- when you come back to us -- you have a home. In our hearts. Even if I'm gone, even if only our children are here to meet you, our arms are open. Not to greet the conquering hero. But to welcome home our papa and grandpa, however old we are. I love you. We all do. All."

  And then, almost as an afterthought: "Please read our letters."

  "I have letters for you," said the computer, as the holospace went empty.

  "Save them," said Mazer. "I'll get to them."

  "You are authorized to send a visual reply," said the computer.

  "That will not happen," said Mazer. But even as he said it, he was wondering what he could possibly say, if he changed his mind and did send them his image. Some heroic speech about the nobility of sacrifice? Or an apology for accepting the assignment?

  He would never show his face to them. Would never let Kim see that he was not changed.

  He would read the letters. He would answer them. There were duties you owed to family, even if the reason they got involved was because of some meddling jerk of a lieutenant.

  "My first letter," said Mazer, "will be to that git, Graff. It's very brief. 'Bugger off, gitling.' Sign it 'respectfully yours.'"

  "'Bugger' is a noun. 'Git' is a substandard verb, and 'gitling' is not in any of my wordbases. I cannot spell or parse the message properly without explanation.... Do you mean 'Leave this place, alien enemy'?"

  "I made gitling up, but it's an excellent word, so use it. And I can't believe they programmed you without 'bugger off' in the wordbase."

  "I detect stress," said the computer. "Will you accept mild sedation?"

  "The stress is being caused by your forcing me to view a message I did not want to see. You are causing my stress. So give me some time to myself to calm down."

  "Incoming message."

  Mazer fe
lt his stress levels rising even higher. So he sighed and sat back and said, "Read it. It's from Graff, right? Always use a male voice for the gitling."

  "Admiral Rackham, I apologize for the intrusion," the computer baritoned. "Once I broached the possibility of letting your family contact you, my superiors would not give up on the idea, even though I warned them it would be more likely to be counterproductive if you hadn't agreed in advance. Still, it was my idea and I take full responsibility for that, but it was also clumsily handled without waiting for your permission, and that was not my responsibility. Though it was completely predictable, because this is the military. There is no idea so stupid that it won't be seized upon and made the basis of policy, and no idea so wise that it won't be perceived as threatening by some paper pusher, who'll kill it if he can, or claim complete credit for it if it works. Am I describing the military you know?"

  Clever boy, thought Mazer. Deflect my anger to the IF. Make me his friend.

  "However, the decision was made to send you only those letters that you would find encouraging. You're being 'handled,' Admiral Rackham. But if you want all the letters, I'll make sure you get the whole picture. It won't make you happier, but at least you'll know I'm not trying to manipulate you."

  "Oh, right," said Mazer.

  "Or at least I'm not trying to trick you," said the computer. "I'm trying to persuade you by winning your trust, if I can, and then your cooperation. I will not lie to you or leave out information in order to deceive you. Tell me if you want all the letters or are content with the comfortable version of your family's life."

  Mazer knew then that Graff had won -- Mazer would have no choice but to answer, and no choice but to request the omitted letters. Then he would be beholden to the gitling. Angry, but in debt.

  The real question was this: Was Graff staging the whole thing? Was he the one who withheld the uncomfortable letters, only so he could gain points with Mazer for then releasing them?

  Or was Graff taking some kind of risk, scamming the system in order to send him the full set of letters?

  Or did Graff, a mere lieutenant, have a degree of power that allowed him to openly flout the orders of his superiors with impunity?

  "Don't send the bugger-off letter," said Mazer.

  "I already sent it and receipt has been confirmed."

  "I'm actually quite happy that you did that," said Mazer. "So here's my next message: Send the letters, gitling."

  Within a few minutes, the reply came, and this time the number of letters was much higher.

  And with nothing else to do, Mazer opened them and began to read them silently, in the order they were sent. Which means that the first hundred were all from Kim.

  The progression of the early letters was predictable, but no less painful to read. She was hurt, angry, grief-stricken, resentful, filled with longing. She tried to hurt him with invective, or with guilt, or by tormenting him with sexually charged memories. Maybe she was tormenting herself.

  Her letters, even the angry ones, were reminders of what he had lost, of the life he once had. It's not as if she invented her temper for this occasion. She had it all along, and he had been lashed by it before, and bore a few old scars. But now it all combined to make him miss her.

  Her words hurt him, tantalized him, made him grieve, and often he had to stop reading and listen to something -- music, poetry, or the drones and clicks of subtle machinery in the seemingly motionless craft that was hurtling through space in, the physicists assured him, a wavelike way, though he could not detect any lack of solidity in any of the objects inside the ship. Except, of course, himself. He could dissolve at a word, if it was from her, and then be remade by another.

  I was right to marry her, he thought again and again as he read. And wrong to leave her. I cheated her and myself and my children, and for what? So I could be trapped here in space while she grows old and dies, and then come back and watch some clever young lad take his rightful place as commander of all the fleets, while I hover behind him, a relic of an old war, who lived out the wrong cliche. Instead of coming home in a bag for his family to bury, it was his family who grew old and died while he came back still ... still young. Young and utterly alone, purposeless except for the little matter of saving the human race, which wouldn't even be in his hands.

  Her letters calmed down after a while. They became monthly reports on the family. As if he had become a sort of diary for her. A place where she could wonder if she was doing the right thing in her raising of the children -- too stern, too strict, too indulgent. If her decisions could have a wrong outcome or a wrong motive, then she wondered constantly if she should have done it differently. That, too, was the woman he had known and loved and reassured endlessly.

  How did she hold together without him? Apparently she remembered the conversations they used to have, or imagined new ones. She inserted his side of the conversation into the letters. "I know you'd tell me that I did the right thing ... that I had no choice ... of course you'd say ... you always told me ... I'm still doing the same old ..."

  The things that a widow would tell herself about her dead husband.

  But widows could still love their husbands. She has forgiven me.

  And finally, in a letter written not so long ago -- last week; half a year ago -- she said it outright. "I hope you have forgiven me for being so angry with you when you divorced me. I know you had no choice but to go, and you were trying to be kind by cutting all ties so I could go on with life. And I have gone on, exactly as you said I should. Let us please forgive one another."

  The words hit him like three-g acceleration. He gasped and wept and the computer became concerned. "What's wrong?" the computer asked. "Sedation seems necessary."

  "I'm reading a letter from my wife," he said. "I'm fine. No sedation."

  But he wasn't fine. Because he knew what Graff and the IF could not have known when they let this message go through. Graff had lied to him. He had withheld information.

  For what Mazer had told his wife was that she should go on with life and marry again.

  That's what she was telling him. Somebody had forbidden them to say or write anything that would tell him that Kim had married another man and probably had more children -- but he knew, because that's the only thing she could mean when she said, "I have gone on, exactly as you said I should." That had been the crux of the argument. She insisting that divorce only made sense if she intended to remarry, him saying that of course she didn't think of remarrying now, but later, when she finally realized that he would never come back as long as she lived, she wouldn't have to write and ask him for a divorce, it would already be done and she could go ahead, knowing that she had his blessing -- and she had slapped him and burst into tears because he thought so little of her and her love for him that he thought she could forget and marry someone else ...

  But she had, and it was breaking his heart, because even though he had been noble about insisting on the divorce, he had believed her when she said she could never love any other man.

  She did love another man. He was gone only a year, and she ...

  No, he had been gone three decades now. Maybe it took her ten years before she found another man. Maybe ...

  "I will have to report this physical response," said the computer.

  "You do whatever you have to," said Mazer. "What are they going to do, send me to the hospital? Or -- I know -- they could cancel the mission!"

  He calmed down, though -- barking at the computer made him feel marginally better. Even though his thoughts raced far beyond the words he was reading, he did read all the other letters, and now he could see hints and overtones. A lot of unexplained references to "we" and "us" in the letters. She wanted him to know.

  "Send this to Graff. Tell him I know he broke his word almost as soon as he gave it."

  The answer came back in a moment. "Do you think I don't know exactly what I sent?"

  Did he know? Or had he only just now realized that Kim had slipped a message
through, and now Graff was pretending that he knew it all along ...

  Another message from Graff: "Just heard from your computer that you have had a strong emotional response to the letters. I'm deeply sorry for that. It must be a challenge, to live in the presence of a computer that reports everything you do to us, and then a team of shrinks try to figure out how to respond in order to get the desired result. My own feeling is that if we intend to trust the future of the human race to this man, maybe we ought to tell him everything we know and converse with him like an adult. But my own letters have to be passed through the same panel of shrinks. For instance, they're letting me tell you about them because they hope that you will come to trust me more by knowing that I don't like what they do. They're even letting me tell you this as a further attempt to allow the building of trust through recursive confession of trickery and deception. I bet it's working, too. You can't possibly read any secret meanings into this letter."

  What game is he playing? Which parts of his letters are true? The panel of shrinks made sense. The military mind: Find a way to negate your own assets so they fail even before you begin to use them. But if Graff really did let Kim's admission that she had remarried sneak through, knowing that the shrinks would miss it, then did that mean he was on Mazer's side? Or that he was merely better than the shrinks at figuring out how to manipulate him?

  "You can't possibly read any secret meanings into this letter," Graff had said. Did that mean that there was a secret meaning? Mazer read it over again, and now what he said in the third sentence took on another possible meaning. "To live in the presence of a computer that reports everything you do to us." At first he had read it as if it meant "reports to us everything you do." But what if he literally meant that the computer would report everything Mazer did to them.

  That would mean they had detected his undetectable reprogramming of the computer.

  Which would explain the panel of shrinks and the sudden new urgency about finding a replacement for Mazer as commander.