Earth Afire

by Orson Scott Card

  Lem knew instantly the role he was supposed to play here. He made eye contact with Father, smiled, walked briskly toward him, and threw himself into Father's embrace. The cameras went crazy. The crowd gave a collective Ahh, as if nothing plucked at the heartstrings more than the reunion of a father and son.

  Father's embrace was tight, pressing them hard into each other, as if Father feared something might suck Lem back out into space. They stayed that way for at least thirty seconds--not too long so as to be awkward for those watching, but long enough to erase any doubt of their absolute love and devotion for each other.

  Then Father broke the embrace and stepped back, holding Lem at arm's length, smiling and regarding his son. Lem was surprised to see tears in Father's eyes, and for a moment Lem even thought them genuine. Then he reminded himself that Father had orchestrated all of this, including this moment, and that Father never left anything to chance. If tears were visible, then tears were meant to be seen.

  Lem briefly considered conjuring up watery eyes of his own--he could do so easily and rather convincingly--but he figured Father would want him to play the role of the strong, masculine one, the son who leaves for war as a boy but who gallantly returns as a man. That was probably the plan anyway.

  The cameras went into high gear again. Tears in Ukko Jukes's eyes? Unprecedented! Click-click-click-click-click.

  "It's good to see you, Father."

  "Welcome home, son."

  Ukko put an arm around Lem, and they moved for the exit, pushing their way through the crowd. Six or seven men from Father's security detail kept the reporters and screaming fans at bay, making a path.

  "Lem, what was it like to fight the Formics?" one reporter yelled, his arm extending from the crowd, holding a recording device.

  "Lem, will you assist your father in his personal fight against the invaders?" yelled another.

  "Did you and your crew really take on the whole Formic ship?"

  "What will you say to the families who've lost loved ones?"

  Lem and Father were moving toward a skimmer Father had parked inside the building. There were more security guards around it. The windows were tinted.

  Just before they reached it, Ukko stopped, turned back, and faced the crowd, his face still plastered with a smile, his voice loud enough to be heard over the din. "Ladies and gentlemen, please. My son just returned home from nearly two years in space. He and his crew have been through a series of traumatic events. He will be happy to answer all of your individual questions on another occasion. For now, please respect a family's privacy. He and I have a lot of catching up to do."

  A security guard opened the skimmer door. Father ushered Lem inside and squeezed in behind him, taking the seat opposite. The door closed, and the skimmer took off. It was quiet and luxurious inside. The seats were wide, deeply cushioned, and covered in leather. Even the lap belts and shoulder straps were the height of comfort, yet another reminder that Lem was truly home. He buckled himself in so as not to be thrown about in the low gravity, then addressed his father. "You just promised those reporters personal interviews with me."

  "You'll need to give a lot of those, Lem," said Ukko. "People want to hear your story."

  "And what story is that?"

  "Don't tell me you've forgotten it already."

  "What story are they expecting, Father?" said Lem. "What did you tell them? You obviously fed them something. They were asking about my involvement with the Formics."

  "Again, good name choice there. The media loves the word 'Formic.' The whole world's using it. It's the hard K sound. You can't argue with a hard K. Like 'tank' or 'kill' or 'Juke.'"

  "'Formic' was Benyawe's idea," said Lem.

  Father smiled. "Noloa Benyawe. How is she?"

  "Fine. She was playing second fiddle to my chief engineer, Dr. Dublin, the ditherer, until I put her in charge of testing the gravity laser. At first I thought it was one of your life tests for me."

  Father frowned. "Life tests?"

  "Come now, Father. All the games you've played with me ever since I was a child, all the obstacles heaped in my path in some ridiculous effort to impart some of your wisdom to me."

  "You flatter yourself, Lem. I have far more important things to do than constructing elaborate scenarios that might teach you a moral or two. You're not a child anymore."

  "No, I'm not. Which is why I was somewhat disappointed when I learned that you had told Dublin not to do anything that might endanger me. And don't deny it. He told me so himself."

  "Why would I deny it?" said Ukko. "You were testing an unproven, potentially volatile device, Lem. I asked Dublin to use caution, if not because of the sheer value of the prototype then at least for the welfare of my only son. Pardon me for such an offense. Next time I'll give little regard for your life and have my engineers be reckless and irresponsible, if that's more to your liking."

  "You made Dublin doubt his every move. He was paralyzed with fear. That's why our first round of tests took so long. Dublin wouldn't take any risks. He had the fear of harming me and therefore displeasing you hovering over his head."

  Ukko laughed. "So I'm responsible for another man's fear now? What else am I guilty of, a child's nightmares? Really, Lem, you're blaming me for your inability to conduct the initial tests? Dublin is a grown man. He makes his own decisions and accepts full responsibility for them. So should you."

  "You gave Chubs, my second in command, the same instructions: Do nothing that will endanger Lem. You essentially told him to supersede my authority. You made me look weak in front of my crew."

  "You seem to forget, Lem, that when you're piloting one of my ships, you're acting as an employee of this company. You don't get special privileges because you're my son. You have responsibilities as a captain, and your first priority shouldn't be how elevated you remain in the minds of your crew. Your first priority is your crew, twenty-five of whom died under your watch and as a direct result of your reckless orders. Do you have any idea how damaging that is to the company? Now there will be lawsuits. And regardless of how we respond, regardless of how fairly we treat the grieving families, regardless of how generous we are in the settlement, the press will skewer us. They will label us insensitive and careless. You can't win those battles, Lem. Sooner or later, the press will stop caring why we did it. It won't matter that we were trying to stop the Formics. We'll look negligent. We'll look like the bad guy. And when that happens, our stock will dip. Do you have any idea how much money is lost when we go down one one-hundredth of a percentage point?"

  Lem didn't answer.

  "Well do you?" Father insisted.

  "Of course I do, Father. I own shares in this company, and I'm the primary shareholder in quite a few others. I know how the market works."

  "Well good. I'm glad to see that your expensive education is affording you some awareness of the world. When you told me you had bumped those free miners off the asteroid, I thought you might have lost control of all your mental faculties."

  "Your precious prototype wasn't damaged, Father."

  "You're right about that, Lem. It is precious. Several billion credits worth. The Makarhu is rather valuable as well. It's one of our fastest, most luxurious ships. Which is why I can't for the life of me understand why you would be irresponsible enough to risk damaging all that. This is piloting 101, Lem. These are fundamental principles that every captain knows. Rule number one: Don't destroy the ship. Rule number two: Don't kill the crew. Surely someone reviewed this with you before you set out."

  Lem turned away from Father and gazed out the window. They had left the terminal now and were flying over the lunar landscape back toward the city. To their right were the massive Juke production facilities where most of the ships in Father's mining fleet were built and tested prior to their departure for the Belt. A massive Juke logo was prominently displayed on the largest and tallest of the buildings.

  "Yes, I gave Chubs special instructions," said Father. "I told him not to follow any or
der of yours that might put you in danger. I did so to protect my property and to protect you."

  "Protect me from what, Father? My own poor judgment? My own stupidity? Don't you realize that by giving that order, you not only stripped me of true command, you also demonstrated your complete lack of confidence in me?"

  "Is that what you want, Lem? Do you want me to tell you how confident I am in you, how sure I am that you can do it? Do you honestly need that kind of coddling?"

  Lem wanted to scream. He wanted to beat the back of his head into the headrest. But he kept still and said nothing.

  "And why are you complaining anyway?" said Father. "Chubs obviously ignored my order. You attacked the Formic ship, for crying out loud, an alien vessel a hundred times your size. I'd say that constitutes dangerous orders. Chubs clearly didn't supersede you then. He followed you, not me."

  "He refused my orders on other occasions."

  "So you were giving out multiple dangerous orders? Well, in that case, it sounds like you were more reckless than I expected and that I was right to give him the instructions I did. You should be thanking me. I might have saved your life."

  Lem turned back to the window. Nothing had changed. Father was as critical and impossible as ever--fixated on Lem's mistakes and blind to all of Lem's accomplishments. Lem had intended to tell Father how Lem and the crew had mined the asteroid, how they had developed a method for extracting the ferromagnetic minerals from the rock after it had been pulverized, which was a potential industry breakthrough. Yet now Lem had no desire to tell Father anything. Why should he? Father would only see the errors. He would only shoot the whole premise with holes.

  Lem suddenly felt angry with himself, realizing now that he had wanted to tell Father the good news not because he knew the extraction technique would help the company, but because he so desperately wanted to win Father's favor.

  How pathetic, thought Lem. After everything, I'm still poking about for Father's approval. Well, not anymore. Enjoy your comfortable seat, Father. If I have my way, this won't be your skimmer or company much longer.

  They flew over the northern outskirts of Imbrium and then continued south over the Old City. Then the skimmer banked to the left and headed east. Soon the city was behind them, and they were once again over untouched lunar surface. Finally, they came to one of the entrances into the tunnels of Juke Limited.

  The entrance was a wide, circular landing pad with a giant letter-number combination on its center, signifying where in the intricate tunnel system they would be entering. The skimmer touched down gently, and the landing pad descended like an elevator. After thirty meters, the landing pad stopped at a brightly lit docking bay, where robot arms lifted the skimmer and carried it off the pad and into the bay airlock.

  Lem could see a shuttle and a few technicians waiting in the bay just outside the airlock. He and Father sat in silence a moment while the airlock pressurized.

  When Father finally spoke, all the bite was gone from his voice. "I am glad you're home, Lem. Despite what you may think, I am glad you're safe. I know I'm not the easiest person to get along with, but everything I've done, I've done because I thought it was best for you. I didn't have an easy upbringing, Lem. You know that. What I've built, I've built from nothing. And one of my fears has always been that your life would be too soft, that you would be too soft. Not because of who you are, but because of what we have, because of the luxuries our fortune affords us. I didn't want you to be a child of privilege, Lem. I didn't want a silver spoon in your mouth. I wanted a bitter spoon for you. Like I had. You may think that makes me a terrible parent, and maybe you're right, but you're a better man because of it. There's no arguing that."

  The airlock buzzed the all-clear, and without another word, Father opened the door and stepped out of the skimmer. He walked through the airlock door and climbed into the waiting shuttle. It whisked him away immediately and disappeared down a corridor.

  Lem sat there a moment, too stunned to move. Not because Father had just abandoned him--Father was always zipping off somewhere--but because Father had never spoken to Lem that way. He had never discussed their relationship or broached the subject of their fortune. Not that Father had made any attempt to conceal their fortune from Lem. How could he? Everything around them bore witness to it. And yet to hear Father mention it and, more significantly, for Father to acknowledge that Lem was any measure of a man felt completely foreign to Lem.

  And yet Father had seemed sincere. There was no hint of irony or sarcasm in his voice.

  What was this? Lem wondered. Another test? Another exercise in humiliation? Or was Father actually speaking from the heart?

  "What's the matter, Lem?" a voice said. "You got space legs?"

  Lem looked up. Father's assistant, Simona, was outside in the airlock, bent forward and looking inside the skimmer, holding her holopad.

  "You're not stuck in there are you? Do I need to call someone?"

  "My legs are fine," said Lem. He climbed out of the skimmer then brushed a nonexistent speck of dust off his sleeve.

  "Little atrophy is nothing to be ashamed of," Simona said. "Two years in zero-G is a long time."

  She was talking to him like he was a boy, just as she always had, even though she was only five years his senior. He hated that. "I'm fine," he said.

  He hadn't noticed her standing there among the technicians earlier, but that didn't surprise him. Simona had a way of suddenly appearing at Father's side exactly when he needed her, usually without making a sound. Lem had jokingly called her a jungle cat once, which she had mistakenly taken as some flirtation. She had then proceeded to tell Lem that she wouldn't be one of his conquests and flatly denied him. Lem had laughed at that, which Simona had taken as yet another insult. It was all a silly misunderstanding, but it had soured the air between them, and Lem could sense that two years apart hadn't mended that.

  Simona looked exactly as she did when he had left: conservative skirt, conservative blouse, flat functional shoes. She was not one for fashion. She usually found the latest trends insulting and ridiculous. Lem agreed with her, but that didn't raise her in his esteem. She was not particularly pretty either. Not plain, but not the kind of woman that would earn a second look. Her hair was arranged to keep it out of her face, and that was the extent of attention she gave it. Her nose was small, her cheeks freckled, her chest flat. She was like an awkward twelve-year-old girl who had made a wish to stay that way her whole life.

  "Father left in a hurry," said Lem.

  "He won't be coming," said Simona. "He has meetings."

  "Coming where?"

  "Didn't he tell you?" She looked down at the schedule on her holopad and started walking away from him down the corridor. "No, of course he didn't. He has too much on his mind." She snapped her fingers. "Come."

  He hurried and fell into step beside her. "I'm not a dog, you know."

  She didn't look up from her pad. "I snap. I give quick commands. That's how we move things along."

  "Yes, well, it's not very polite."

  "Your father doesn't mind it."

  "I'm not my father. I'm nothing like my father."

  She shot him a glance and a wry smile. "No, you're not."

  He stopped. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  She faced him. "It means what I said. I was agreeing with you."

  "Yes, but when you say it, it sounds like an insult."

  She folded her arms. "Agreeing with statements you make is insulting. Noted. I'll argue and disagree more." She motioned down the hall. "Now, shall we move on?"

  They got walking again. Lem grit his teeth. Same old Simona. Ten seconds, and you wanted to strangle her.

  "Why the rush?" he asked. He practically had to jog to keep up with her.

  "We keep a tight schedule, Lem. Your father is managing the largest corporation in the world and trying to stop a war. It's a full plate. I'm glad you're home, by the way."

  "Thanks."

  "Your father is glad as wel
l. He's been concerned about you."

  "So he said."

  She cast him a look. "You don't believe him?"

  He didn't want to answer. Whatever he said to Simona would doubtless be echoed to Father. "Where are we going?" he asked, changing the subject.

  "We're not going anywhere anymore," she said. "We're here." She stopped and opened a door to her left. Lem followed her in. They stood inside a small anteroom where there was a director's chair, a mirror, and a woman with several boxes of cosmetics. Beyond the anteroom was a much bigger space, where production lights and cameras were set up. A crew of five people was moving about, fussing with various equipment.

  Simona pointed to the director's chair. "Sit."

  Lem sat, gesturing to the cameras in the other room. "What is this?"

  The woman with the cosmetics draped a paper bib around Lem's neck and began dusting his face with powder.

  "This," said Simona, "is your first interview. Gun Chen. He's Chinese. He has an early-morning program. Very popular. Here are your talking points." She ticked them off on her fingers. "One, you were in the Kuiper Belt testing a Juke Limited proprietary device. You learned of the Formics, and you made plans to stop them--"

  "It wasn't my idea to stop them," Lem interrupted. "It was someone else's."

  "Whose? Another crewmember?"

  "Another ship. Free miners. They came to me and asked us to help."

  "In that case, you will say that you were in contact with another ship, and that 'we decided to attack the Formics.' They couldn't have done it without you, so you should give yourself more credit."

  "There was a third ship as well," said Lem. "A WU-HU vessel."

  Simona's face soured. "Were they in the fight?"

  "Not technically. They stayed back with the women and children."