The summer park at Londra, New Avalon, had its Speakers’ Corner, as did all the public parks on New Avalon.
Constable Graham twirled his truncheon, smiling under the morning mist that was beginning to lift. Overhead, a few patches of blue appeared between the ragged gray clouds.
The constable slowed as he approached the paved area and the three public podiums. He studied the small crowd—less than fifty, and mostly university students on their midmorning class breaks.
Graham frowned as he saw that a number of the students were poring over identical leaflets. That was unusual, since most of the speakers were either expatriate politicians trying to recapture their glory days or political science students practicing for later campaigns. The reputation of the university was such that even a few of the younger sons of the first families of the Empire studied there. Few others could have afforded the jumpship passage costs.
Consequently, seldom was literature passed out. Even less often was it read.
The constable edged closer to the single speaker, seeing only a dark-haired young man, wearing the traditional and formal black university tunic.
“Power? I ask you—what is it? What is its basis? Power is the ability to control people’s lives. Ah, yes, a truism. So simple. But look beyond the simplicity. Look beyond the mere words, beyond the obvious phrases. Ask what composes control.
“You need food. Whoever controls your food supply controls you. You need shelter. Whoever controls the providing of shelter controls you.
“Take that a step forward. Let us say a man gives you a handful of seeds. He says, ‘One of these will grow into a house that will provide shelter, and the rest will become plants to provide all the good food you will ever need.’
“I ask you, is this in the interest of any government?
“No! A thousand times, no!
“Just take the food. If each man or woman could grow his own with little effort, what need would there be for millions of hectares of land for farms, for government agriculture pricing policies. And if each family grew their own food, how could the government ever produce enough of a surplus to maintain an army? Or a secret police force?”
Graham frowned again, letting his truncheon drop to his side.
“Rubbish,” he muttered under his breath, looking up at the student on the podium, who seemed too old to be anything but a senior graduate fellow. The policeman studied the man. He did not recall seeing the speaker in the park before.
“You!” demanded the speaker, and Graham stopped, held momentarily by eyes that flashed yellow. “You! Constable! Do you believe a government’s purpose is to serve its people? Or should the people serve it by feeding its soldiers?”
Graham retreated without speaking, grabbing a leaflet from the first bench he passed.
“Come, Constable! If the government has no massive farmlands and no great agricultural surplus with which to support a nonproductive bureaucracy and an unnecessary army, how could it remain oppressive?”
“What about feudalism?” snapped another student.
Graham ducked away, leaflet in hand, glad of the reprieve and to escape from the yellow-eyed speaker.
“…feudalism was based on scarcity…on the fact that self-sufficiency was limited…outdated by modern communications and modern biologics…advances hidden away from you by the Empire…”
“Isn’t that the same old conspiracy theory?”
“No conspiracy. People need organized society…need protection…but the lack of independence in obtaining the basics has left them at the mercy of government. It is no accident that repressive governments cannot exist on new frontiers, where individuals can support themselves or can readily leave. Repression exists where there are no alternatives…”
The constable continued away from the speaker, folding the leaflet and tucking it away to read later. It might actually be interesting. He resumed twirling his truncheon and checking the benches, absently noting the regulars and the newcomers, tipping his antique helmet to the few mothers and their small children as he neared the playground.
Idly, he wondered about the leaflet, about the quality feel of the paper. The whole business seemed strange.
He shrugged.
All the speakers had something strange about them, but the commonwealth believed in free speech, always had, and always would, no matter how strange the students that flocked to the university. Even if they had yellow eyes and strange ideas.
XXII
Lyr checked the invoices again. She frowned, then tapped in an inquiry and analysis program.
“What is he up to now?” she muttered as she waited for the results. While she should have returned to reviewing the budget flow, she decided against it, arbitrarily, and let her thoughts wander as the analyzer sorted through the invoices and purchases made by the commander over the past year.
It could be her imagination. Then again, it might not be imagination at all.
From what she could tell, lately his efforts had moved from the research and new grants area far more into field testing and production, in some cases even into granting licenses.
All had generated substantial revenues and strange amounts of new contributions to the foundation; many of which were from entities she suspected were no more than aliases or ciphers from the commander himself.
He seemed uneasy with the growing attention he received, and particularly when he learned that his own name had appeared in the listing of commercial magnates of the Empire (unrecognized section).
Lyr smiled wryly. She had no doubts that the total holdings of the commodore she still thought of as a commander were more than sufficient to place him well up among the barons of the Empire.
She had mentioned that, once.
“You had better hope that no one puts that together, then, for both your sake and mine.”
“Why?” she had asked, but he had not answered the question, as he often did not when the inquiry revolved around his personal activities.
Cling.
She looked down at the screen as the results from the analyzer program began to print out.
As each statistic appeared, she nodded, smiling faintly as the figures confirmed her suspicions.
“Conclusion?” she tapped out.
“Probability of terraforming operation being developed with biologic technology exceeds point seven. No evidence of delivery vehicles included.”
She frowned at the last. What would be needed for such a delivery system?
Her mouth dropped open as she recalled an obscure fact—one that Gerswin had mentioned more than once. The Empire had originally forbidden terraforming because it had been thought that the development of the techniques had been what had devastated Old Earth. While the prohibition had technically lapsed, the attitude had probably not.
She scripted another inquiry, hovering over the screen for the analyzer’s response.
Cling.
Tapping the keyboard studs, she watched as the conclusion scripted out.
“Without foundation data, probability of successful analysis of terraforming project is less than point two within five standard years. Exact calculation of future probabilities impossible, but trends analysis would indicate that successful analysis by outside sources possible within ten standard years and approaches unity in less than thirty years.”
No wonder the man seemed driven, almost as if he knew his projects would be discovered.
But what were they? What planet or planets did he want to terraform? What planet would appeal to a hawk-eyed immortal?
Lyr shivered, not certain she wanted to know the answer to the question she posed. She did not frame another inquiry for the analyzer.
Instead, her hands framed the sequence to delete the entire file she had created.
XXIII
Black the ship was, and streamlined in the ancient tradition that predated the Federation that had predated the Empire that would precede the Commonality of Worlds. Black the ship was, and with a nonju
mp speed that indicated a scout. Black with the full-fade dark finish that no eye could grasp in the dimness of space.
The pilot ignored the lunar relays and their inquiries, flashed well clear of the geosynch station for the High Plains port, and dropped the scout into a high-temp entry that would have vaporized most ships that attempted it, and one which required a deceleration beyond the physical limits of most ships and pilots. Such a deceleration was impossible for contemporary ships, with their automatically linked shields and gravfields.
The scout’s full power was tied to the shields during entry. Using the gravfield would have diverted too much energy from the deceleration, particularly since the streamlined configuration of the scout was far from optimal for a gravfield inside an atmosphere.
The lunar detectors lost the scout in less than half a descent orbit, and the geosynch station picked it up later and lost it sooner.
“Scout, characteristics…high-speed entry…”
The entire data package was light-stuttered to the entry port operations at High Plains, filed in the lunar relay banks, and ignored in both locales.
The scout pilot, pressed into the accel/decel couch, looked to be perhaps thirty standard years, blond, curly-haired, and wore a dark olive uniform without insignia.
His fingers alone reacted to the data screen and the data inputs flashing before him.
A dull roar and rumble marked his passing through the clouds, that, and the puzzled look on the face of a duty operations technician.
“Captain’s luck! Unauthorized entry, and they both lost it. Not even a hint of descent area. How are we supposed to find it?
“Old war scout, from the profile. Refugee, smuggler, or…” He paused because he could not think of a realistic alternative with which to complete the sentence.
Finally, he posted up the entry for the operations officer, who would have the final responsibility for action, not that Major Lostler could do much with neither locale nor down time. Then he punched the entry into the log, and completed his duties by relaying the bulletin to the other Recorps subposts.
He smiled briefly. Smuggler or refugee, what could the one or two people in a small ship do, particularly with no energy sources left anywhere but in Recorps territory?
By the time the scout had settled into the twisted ecological nightmare that had once been called Northern Europe, the tech had dismissed the reported unauthorized entry as insignificant.
XXIV
“Interrogative shields.”
“Shields in the green.”
“Interrogative outside energy levels.”
“No outside energy levels.”
The man at the control couch leaned back, sighed. Outside of the momentary scan from the lunar detectors, his return had apparently gone unnoticed. Either that, or no one really cared.
“Current number of dispersal torps?”
“There are twenty full message-sized torps, one hundred ten-percent torps, and ten thousand shells.”
“Commence pattern Beta.”
“Commencing pattern Beta.”
The obsolete scoutship began the drop run over the planet’s most desolated continent, scheduled to receive five of the full-spectrum torps and thirty of the ten percenters. Because he was limited to the small message torps by both the ship’s limited capacity and the size of the permitted launchers, the seeding would take time, perhaps too much. But he was limited to what he had. Even if but a few of his torps were successful, eventually the spread would complete itself.
With luck, as much as twenty percent of the reclamation seeds and spores would survive.
Even if only one percent made it, over time, the ecology would recover. It would not be quite the same ecology as before the collapse, not with some of the additions and built-in stabilizers, but what else could he have done? The dozers were still at it, and they had been far from enough. No pure mechanical technology would ever have been enough.
“Energy concentration at two seven five, five zero kays. Probability of long-range monitor approaches unity.”
The pilot nodded at the mechanically feminine tone of the AI, but said nothing as his hands played over the screens before him.
“How long until the first turn?”
“Ten plus.”
“That will bring us back toward the monitor?”
“That is affirmative.”
“Probability of crew.”
“No crew. Monitor is Epsilon three, stored burst, link transmitting type.”
“Can you detect transmissions?”
“No transmissions detected.”
Gerswin nodded. The monitor had not yet detected the Caroljoy, or an immediate transmission would have gone out.
He shrugged.
“Break Beta pattern. Commence Delta in two minutes.”
Gerswin strapped himself in place for the high-speed drop series that was about to follow.
While a monitor could not harm the Caroljoy, the scout had no exterior weapons with which to silence the monitor, and as soon as the monitor discovered a scoutship where one did not belong, it would relay that information, and satellite control or some other authority might well decide to send something which did have the power to disable or damage the scout.
Why Recorps or the Impies were wasting energy on surveillance monitors was a mystery that could wait, one that he did not need to investigate at the moment.
“Monitor is ground scanning.”
“Cancel Delta.”
“Canceling Delta.”
“Interrogative ground scanning. No other scans?”
“Monitor is ground scanning only. Scan pattern indicates that no other surveillance patterns are in use.”
“Resume Beta pattern as planned. Notify me if monitor shifts from ground scan.”
“Will notify if monitor scan patterns change.”
Thump.
His ears picked up the sound of the first full message-sized torp launch. He waited to see if the Epsilon monitor reacted, but neither the AI nor his scan screens detected any change in the pattern of the Recorps monitor, nor any transmissions from it.
Thwip.
The softer sound of a ten percenter barely edged into his hearing. The AI was releasing the shells at a much faster rate, but they were so small he could not detect the individual releases.
Gerswin shifted his weight, waiting as the scout/yacht called Caroljoy continued to deliver the cargo he had promised so long before.
Thwip.
“Beta, section one, complete. Commencing pattern section two.”
“Stet.”
Gerswin split the far left screen and tapped a code. The homer signal, tight and far off-band, was clear. He should not have been surprised, but he was. The north coast refuge he had built so many years before was still there, still functioning, still apparently undiscovered.
Thwip.
“Get me a broad band sample.”
He listened, trying to pick out intelligible phrases from the transmissions, most of them made a quarter of a planet away.
“…Dragon two…tracs…home plate…”
“…negative…is negative this time…”
“Outrider three…vector on…scout bearing…”
“…have Amstar hold…”
“…ScotiaOps…Dragon two…return…say again…return…”
For a time, static alone filled the speakers.
Thwip.
Thump!
“Completing Beta, section two. Commencing pattern section three.”
“Stet.”
Gerswin shook his head.
So anticlimactic. No guards, no armed flitters, no fanfares. Just blanketing wastelands with spores and seeds.
“What did you expect?”
“Query imprecise,” answered the AI.
He ignored the artificial intelligence.
“Query imprecise.”
“Withdrawn,” he snapped.
Thwip. Another ten-percent torp launched.
The pilot massaged his forehead, rubbing his temples with the fingers and thumb of his right hand.
“What next, great reclaimer?”
“Pattern section four is the next section of the Beta pattern,” chimed the cool and impersonal tones of the AI.
Gerswin wanted to shake his head, but just kept rubbing his temples. Usually, he tried to avoid asking himself questions when the AI was operational. He was slipping.
Slipping in more ways than one. Each year, it was harder to separate the memories, harder to keep them all in order, to remember the differences between Caroljoy and Constanza, between Faith and Allison, between Lerwin and Lostwin, between beta- and delta-class flitters.
And it was harder to think things through, harder to separate the dreams from hard plans for the future.
He let his hand drop and looked up at the screen, the blackness showing the plot, the Caroljoy’s position and the distant blip that represented the ground-scanning monitor.
What next?
Shaking his head slowly, he let his eyes drop.
He had stepped up his physical training, in hopes that it would help his mental sharpness. The physical reflexes were still as good as ever, perhaps better, automatic and maintained with practice. But the mental abilities…
Soon he would have to face that question. That and the future. Would a single-focused project help? Give him time to sort things out while not juggling a thousand variables?
He couldn’t think that through yet. Not yet. Not until the last shell, the last torps, until all had spread their cargo across the desolated spaces of Old Earth. But that would only be a few dozen hours away.
Thwip.
“Completing Beta, section three. Commencing pattern section four.”
“Stet.”
Thump!
XXV
The pilot sat back in the control couch, staring at the blank main screen.
“Now what?”
“Query imprecise.”
“The query is not for you.”
“Stet,” responded the AI.
The refuges, north European coast and western continental mountain, were both waiting, apparently undiscovered. And he had done what he had promised them all, promised young Corwin, assuming the boy had survived and returned to Old Earth, and Kiedra and Lerwin and Caroljoy. He had carried out his trust, hadn’t he?
The Forever Hero Page 70