“If you ever give me the time off, I’ll come and take a look.”
“That’s what I wanted to see you about.” Bradley stopped as the waitress brought Adam’s hot chocolate, and smiled winningly at her. She sneaked a smile back at him before hurrying off to the next table.
Adam tried not to show his annoyance at the little silent exchange, it was just one more reminder of his own age. “You’re going to give me more free time?” he asked.
“Quite the opposite, old chap. That’s why I wanted to see you in person, to impress upon you how important the next few years are going to be. After all, you’re not … a lifelong Guardian. Your commitment to the cause has always been more financially oriented. I want to know if you’re prepared to continue your role when things get a lot tougher.”
“Tougher? That Myo bitch almost caught me on Velaines.”
“Oh, come come, Adam, she was never even close. You outsmarted her beautifully. And continue to do so, the components are all arriving on schedule.”
“Save the flattery for the bourgeois. I can’t be motivated that way.”
“Very well. So will you continue to provide us with your assistance, and if so how much will it cost?”
“What exactly are you wanting from me?”
“This is the time which the Starflyer has worked for. The time for good men to draw a line in the sand and say: No more.”
“No further,” Adam muttered.
Bradley sipped his tea and smiled. “In the past, maybe. But in the here and now, I know what must be done. Little of it will be pleasant.”
“Revolution never is for those who live through it.”
“This is not revolution, Adam, this is my crusade. I am going to fling the corrupter of humanity into the depths of night beyond hell, where even the devil fears to tread. And that will be the least it deserves. I will avenge myself and all the others who have been consumed by the Starflyer’s evil.”
“Bravo.”
“You have your beliefs and convictions, Adam, I have mine. Please don’t mock them, I find it unpleasant. What I am proposing is to extend our combat activities off Far Away. I want to directly confront the Starflyer’s agents and interests in the Commonwealth. And now would you care to tell me what your cooperation will cost, if that doesn’t make you too much of a capitalist?”
“Direct confrontation? You want me to lead your troops into battle?”
“Yes. You know more about covert operations and security procedures than any of us. That makes you invaluable to me, Adam. I need you for this. All I can say is that without a human race, there will not be any socialist society. So will you help me?”
It was a fair question, Adam admitted to himself. Not one he expected in a pleasant café overlooking a serene lake with a fairy-tale castle. But then where should such questions be delivered? Just what do I want out of life? Once again his resolve faltered. It had been a principle for so long not to seek rejuvenation, because it was a purchase of the bourgeois and their plutocrat masters. Society should be structured so that everyone received it regardless of circumstances. The ancient political dream of justice and equality for all, true socialism. For all his active involvement in the cause, the disruption and violence he’d unleashed against the establishment, nothing had changed. But that doesn’t make me wrong. When he thought of the others, ex-friends and comrades, who had betrayed the movement over the decades by abandoning them or worse, he knew what his course must be, despite the intensely human wish to live forever. If even someone as committed as him gave in at the end, what hope ultimately could there be?
“I’m tired, Bradley, really truly tired. I’ve seen my ideals crushed by the plutocrats for my whole life. I’m clinging to a lost cause because I don’t know anything else. Do you realize how pathetic that makes me? Well, I don’t want to save the Commonwealth anymore; I’ve tried to do that for fifty years and got nowhere. I can’t do it anymore. There’s no point. Capitalism or the Starflyer, I don’t care which of them finishes off this society. I’m through with it.”
“No you’re not; stop trying to talk up your bargaining position, Adam. You are not going to stand by and watch an alien commit genocide against your own species. You’re an idealist. It’s a magnificent flaw, one I quite envy. Now what can I offer you for your invaluable services?”
“I don’t know. Hope, maybe.”
“Fair enough.” Bradley nodded at the remarkable castle atop its pinnacle. Sunlight was striking the slender conical turrets, making their polished rock walls shine with a vivid bronze and emerald hue. “The original castle back in Edinburgh was the seat of Scottish nationalism. It symbolized everything to the diehard believers. Despite all the changes and defeats they endured, the castle stood solid at the center of their capital. They waited for generations for the Scottish nation to be properly reborn after their Bonnie Prince was lost. There were times when the cause seemed impossible, or even cursed; they regained their independence from the English only to lose it again right away with the formation of Federal Europe. But once people reached the stars, the true nation was reborn here, and on two other worlds. An ideal kept alive in the darkness can flourish if it has the chance, no matter how long the night lasts. Don’t give up on your ideals, Adam, not ever.”
“Very trite, I’m sure.”
“Then try this. I’ve seen what societies like ours progress into. I’ve walked on their worlds and admired them firsthand. This Commonwealth is only an interim stage for a species like ours; even your Socialism will be left behind in true evolution. We can become something wonderful, something special. We have that potential.”
Adam stared at him for a long time, wishing he could see through those enigmatic eyes into the mind beyond. Bradley’s faith in himself and his cause had always been extraordinary. There had been times over the last thirty years when Adam really wished he could write Bradley off in the same way the Commonwealth establishment dismissed him, as nothing more than a crackpot conspiracy theorist. But there were too many little details for him to be laughed off. His superb intelligence sources, for a start. The way little facets of Commonwealth policy were organized, seemingly out of kilter with the interests of the Grand Families and Intersolar Dynasties. Adam was so close to believing the whole Starflyer notion; at the very least he didn’t disbelieve it anymore. “There’s something I’d like to know, though I’m afraid it might be a personal weakness on my part.”
“I will be honest with you, Adam. I owe you that much.”
“Where do you go for your rejuvenation? Is there some secret underground clinic that I don’t know about which provides the treatment for people like us?”
“No, Adam, there’s nowhere like that. I use the Unstorn clinic on Jaruva. It’s very good.”
Adam paused as his e-butler called the CST Intersolar timetable up into his virtual vision. “Is Jaruva a town somewhere?”
“No, it’s a planet. CST shut down the gateway two hundred and eighty years ago, after a civil war between various nationalist culture factions and the radical evangelicals. The only thing they hated worse than each other was the Commonwealth—there were some unpleasant acts of terrorism committed before the Isolation. Things have calmed down considerably since then, thankfully. They have rebuilt their society, with each faction having its own homeland. The structure is similar to Earth in the mid-twentieth century. None of the mini-nations are Socialist, I’m afraid.”
“I see,” Adam said carefully. “And how do you get there?”
“There is a path which leads to Jaruva. The Silfen don’t really use it anymore.”
“Somehow I knew you’d give me an answer like that.”
“I will be happy to take you there and pay for a rejuvenation, if that’s what you want.”
“Let’s leave that possibility open, shall we?”
“As you wish. But the offer is sincere and remains.”
“I wish I believed as you do.”
“You are not far from it, Adam. Not r
eally. I expect what is about to happen over the next few years will convince you. But then, I expect it to convince everyone.”
“All right,” Adam said. He had a sense of near relief now he’d made his decision. Many people spoke of the contentment that came from accepting defeat; he was mildly surprised to find it was true. “So what do you want the Guardians to do in the Commonwealth? And bear in mind, I won’t ever repeat Abadan station, I don’t do political statement violence anymore.”
“My dear chap, neither do I. And thank you for agreeing to this. I know how it conflicts with your own goals. Don’t give up on them. You will live to see a socially just world.”
“Like a priest will see heaven.”
Bradley’s soft smile was understanding and sympathetic.
“What are you going to hit first?” Adam asked.
“The Second Chance is my primary target right now. Part of your task is going to be assembling a crew to obliterate it.”
“Old folly; you can never destroy knowledge. Even if we were to succeed and blow the Second Chance to pieces, they’ll build another, and another, and another until one is finally completed. They know how to build them, therefore they will be built.”
“I expect you’re right, unfortunately. But destroying the Second Chance will be a severe blow to the Starflyer. It wanted the starship built, you know.”
“I know. I received the shotgun message.” Adam stared out at Castle Mount for some time. “You know, castles once had a purpose other than symbolism; they used to hold the invaders at bay and keep the kingdom safe. We don’t build them anymore.”
“We need them, though, now more than ever.”
“What a pair we make,” Adam said. “The optimist and the pessimist.”
“Which do you claim to be?”
“I think you know.”
....
To the mild dismay of his staff, Wilson always arrived in the office at around half past seven in the morning. With management meetings, training sessions, interviews, engineering assessments, media reports, a one-hour gym workout, and a dozen other items scheduled every day he didn’t leave until after nine most evenings. He took lunch at his desk rather than waste time going to the excellent canteen on the ground floor. His influence began to percolate through the whole starship project, and with it his enthusiasm. Procedures were tightened under his relentless directives, policy became clear-cut and effective. Pride settled around the complex, driving the crews onward.
Every week, Wilson met up with Nigel Sheldon to perform their ritual inspection tour of Second Chance. They arrived at the gateway, and kicked off into the assembly platform. Both of them pointing at and gossiping about some new section of the huge ship, acting like a pair of school kids.
All of the plasma rockets were installed now, along with their turbopumps and power injectors. Big reaction mass tanks were being eased into cavities along the ship’s central engineering superstructure, dark gray ellipsoids whose internal structure was a honeycomb maze of tiny sacs.
“It’s the ultimate slosh-baffle design,” Wilson explained as the two of them glided along the assembly grid above the central cylinder. “The sacs can squeeze out their contents no matter what acceleration maneuver we’re pulling, and while we’re coasting, they hold the fluid stable. If only we’d had that on the old Ulysses we’d have saved ourselves a lot of mechanical trouble, but materials technology has come a long way since those days.”
Nigel held on to one of the platform grids, pausing directly above an egg-shaped tank that was being gently eased into position by robot arms. Construction crew and remote mobile sensors were swarming around it like bees to their queen. “How come we’re not using hydrogen? I thought that gives the best specific impulse for rocket exhausts.”
“When you’re talking chemical reactions, sure. But the plasma rockets operate at such a high energy level they break their working fluid down into subatomic particles. The niling d-sinks we’re carrying pump so much power in, this plasma is actually hotter than a fusion generator’s exhaust. With that kind of efficiency, cryogenics is a waste of time. Of course, in an ideal world we’d be using mercury as the propellant fluid, but even that has handling problems, not to mention cost and sourcing for the kind of volume we’re looking at. So what we’ve wound up with is a very dense hydrocarbon, it’s almost pure crude oil, but the chemists have tweaked the molecular structure so it remains liquid over a huge temperature range. Given the type of near-perfect insulation we’ve got cloaking the tanks, the thermal support we have to provide for the fuel is minimal.”
Nigel gave the tank a thoughtful look. “I always used to think rockets were dead simple.”
“The principle is as simple as you can get, it’s just the engineering which is complex. But we’re doing our best to reduce that; modern techniques allow us to do away with whole layers of ancillary systems.”
“I heard you’ve instigated a design review board.”
“Final design approval, yeah. I prefer that method to the multiple steering committees you’d set up.” Wilson let go of the grid, and pushed off so he was drifting along the length of the starship toward the life-support wheel. “It gives the project an overall architecture policy.”
“I’m not arguing. This is your show now.”
They passed over the wheel section. The internal decks were clearly visible now, with decking and wall paneling fixed to the stress structure, showing the internal layout.
“We should start fixing the hull in place by the end of next month,” Wilson said.
“Not too much slippage, then.”
“No. You gave me a good team. And the unlimited funding helps.”
“Actually, it’s not unlimited, and I’ve noticed it’s still rising.”
“That was inevitable, but it really should have plateaued now we’re entering the final design freeze. We’ve already started to make a few modifications to the central cylinder to accommodate the expanded stand-off observation period of the mission. The upgraded sensor suite is finishing its alpha-analysis stage, it should be out to tender soon. And we already have the engineering mock-ups of the class three and four remote probe satellites. They’re being assembled for us at High Angel by Bayfoss—we’re up to capacity here, and they are the experts. Most of your exploratory division geosurvey satellites are built by them.”
“Sure.” Nigel took another look at the crew accommodation decks, where an atmospheric processor had been secured in place, still wrapped in its silver packaging. “Man, I still can’t get over how big this beauty is. You’d think … I don’t know, we could build something neater by now.”
“A one-man starship?” Wilson asked in amusement. He waved a hand at the front of the cylinder. “You helped design the hyperdrive engine. I’ve owned smaller houses than that monster.”
“Yeah yeah, I know. I ought to go back and take another look at the basic equations.”
“You do that, but I’m telling you a car-sized starship will never catch on. I want something big and powerful around me when I go exploring the unknown.”
“Man, oh, man, Freud would have had a field day with you. Now, how’s it going with the crew selection?”
“Hoo boy.” Wilson grimaced at the memory. “The actual crew squad has been finalized. We’ve got two hundred and twenty who’ll start their second phase training next week. We’ll select the final fifty a month before launch. The science team is a little tougher; we’ve passed seventy so far, and Oscar’s office is trying to sort out the rest of the applications. It’s the interviews that are taking up so much time; the Commonwealth has an awful lot of highly qualified people out there, and we need to put them all through assessment and psych profiling. What I’d like is a pool of about three hundred to choose from.”
“Ah.” Nigel stopped himself above the rim of the life-support wheel, watching a constructionbot fixing a decking plate into place. “Have you considered taking Dr. Bose with you?”
“Bose? Oh, the astr
onomer who saw the envelopment. I think I remember Oscar mentioning he’d applied; he’s certainly got a lot of sponsors. Do you want me to check if he got through the assessment?”
“Not as such, no. The thing is, my office is getting a lot of inquiries about him, as is the Vice President.”
For a moment Wilson thought he meant the vice president of CST. “You mean Elaine Doi?”
“Yes. It’s a bit awkward. Every time the media want a comment on the envelopment they turn to Bose, which is understandable. The trouble is, he cooperates with them. All of them. When the guy sleeps, I’ve no idea. But anyway, in the public eye he’s most strongly associated with the project. It’s a position he’s exploited superbly.”
“Wait a minute here, are you telling me I’ve got to take him?”
“All I’m saying is that if you were planning on taking an astronomer, you could do worse. For an obscure professor from a back-of-beyond planet, he’s certainly a goddamn expert self-publicist.”
“I’ll tell Oscar to review the file, if that’s what’s bugging you.”
“That’s good. And I hope there won’t be any ageism in the selection process?”
“What?”
“It’s just that the professor is, er, kind of closer to his time for rejuvenation than you or I … or anyone else you’re considering. That’s all.”
“Oh, Jesus wept.”
....
The plantation where Tara Jennifer Shaheef lived was on the far side of the mountains that rose up out of the northern districts of Darklake City. Even with a modern highway leading through them, it took the car carrying Paula and Detective Hoshe Finn a good three hours to drive there. They turned off the junction at the start of a wide valley, the car snaking along a winding local road. The slopes on either side were heavily cultivated with coffee bushes; every row seemed to have an agriculturebot of some kind trundling along, tending the verdant plants. Humans and buildings were less prominent within this landscape.
The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle Page 30