Sometimes I wondered if they’d eventually inherit the earth—if we managed to leave them an earth to inherit.
I kept running, more slowly now that the moonlight was fading as the first tendrils of the clouds seeped southward across the sky and across Luna herself. When I got to a clearer spot on the trail, I squinted, and sure enough, could see that thin and short black line on the moon’s surface that was all that remained of the ancient linear accelerator that had stretched for more than two hundred klicks.
I studied the piñon forest gently rising in front of me, then shook my head and turned back toward the house, trying to ignore the fatigue in my legs and the numbness in my soul.
XII
Outside the windows of the Coordinator’s office, the snow had stopped falling, but the sky remained gray. Gray, like my mood.
Delta and Kappa stations remained inoperative, despite two more shuttles full of equipment and a half-dozen technicians. Elanstan and Rhetoral sounded haggard and stressed. Ingehardt from the NorAm maintenance depot had called me again, and he sounded haggard and stressed, and wanted to know if Elanstan’s priorities for immediate shuttle lift were that urgent. His voice got even more ragged when I told him that if he could find a way to do it faster, he’d better.
Cyb commander Gorum sent a written message confirming Henslom’s request for billets for another five hundred marcybs, and asking us to consider another five hundred after Ellay. I’d forwarded that through the link to the representative Committee of the Consensus, indicating I would stall on the third increment.
“Ecktor?” The persistent voice bored through the uppernet.
“Yes, Locatio?” Leaning back in the swivel, I waited.
“We’re still having trouble …”
“So am I. I don’t have answers from Crucelle. We can’t get the necessary system equipment aloft to the ell stations, and the cybs are already pressing me for more planetside billets. No, I’m not granting any more yet.”
“I told you this would happen. You give in to them—”
“I never wanted to give in. We’re not ready. Do you think I like this charade? We have to show some sign of cooperation because they’re looking for noncooperation as an excuse to power up all that destructive hardware.”
“Ecktor? Can’t we have another day?”
“No.” He might get it, but if I told him that immediately, he’d just be asking for another day by tomorrow.
“K’gaio won’t like this.”
“I’ve already talked to K’gaio, and she told me to tell you that she felt I had a lever on the situation. Link with her if you want.”
“She said that?”
“Absolutely—in her very polite way.”
“Why did you contact her? That’s a way of circumventing the Committee.”
“Locatio, she linked with me—at your request. I made no effort to contact her.”
With the momentary silence, I added, “I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances, and I appreciate your cooperating under difficult conditions.”
It took more pleasantries, but I finally disengaged without giving in, and without telling Locatio that Crucelle still hadn’t given me an answer on the ENF resonance issue. No sense in having Locatio linking to us both.
The problems wouldn’t have been even fly bites for the old Rebuilt Hegemony, but the economic and social pressures created by the conflict between power and the principles of the Construct had forced the implosion of the Hegemony in a handful of centuries. The Construct was unforgiving, and so were the Power Paradigms. Of course, the cybs hadn’t managed to figure those underlying principles out yet. No culture does when it’s young, and when it’s old enough to understand it’s usually too late. We’d been lucky—lucky, and willing to pay the very high price. At times, I hated the Construct, but it had one big thing going for it. It had worked for a long, long time.
“A cyb subcommander to see you, Coordinator.” Keiko’s words came through the net, as smooth and polished as always. “A Subcommander Kemra.”
Kemra—the cyb officer who resembled Morgen. She was all I needed.
“I’m here.” I stood and walked to the half-open office door.
“Coordinator.” The sandy-haired woman in the dark green uniform of the Vereal Union stopped more than a meter short of me, not surprisingly since the cybs like more physical space than most cultures. She inclined her head stiffly.
“Subcommander. Please come in.”
She did, and I closed the door, then motioned to one of the upholstered green chairs. She took the one facing both the door and the windows, sitting down somewhat stiffly, though not in the rigid way Majer Henslom had. I eased into the chair at the other end of the low table and studied the cyb. She still looked far too much like the sister Morgen had never had.
“You’re the navigator?”
“I’m Kemra.”
“What do you want?” About some things, I’ve never been good at saying nothing.
“Information. Background on what’s happened on Old Earth. A general feel for your culture.” Her voice was harsh, husky, almost hoarse, because she spoke so little.
I nodded and asked, “Why you?”
“Why not? The Fleet doesn’t need a navigator while it’s in orbit.” She shrugged, and the gesture was half-familiar.
Why her? Had the cyb construct picked up my reaction? Probably, and that showed just how dangerous the cybs were, despite their arrogance. I forced myself to wait.
“I studied old Anglas, and nav work isn’t exactly solar-flash right now,” she concluded in a professional tone, one that would have done justice to Majer Ysslop.
She didn’t want to be in the office, and that bothered me, although I certainly understood the feelings. I didn’t really want to be in the office, either.
Still, pleasantries were necessary, and I linked to Keiko. “We need some of the Selastiorini, fruit, crackers, something to go with it. Two glasses.”
“So friendly already?” Keiko asked, the hint of raised eyebrows following the words.
“Quite formal,” I pulsed back.
“I can barely even sense your netlinks,” Kemra said.
“I asked for some refreshments, that’s all.”
Another swirl of snowflakes fluttered past the windows, and Kemra shivered slightly. I was more than warm enough.
“It’s cold here.”
“Colder than Gates?”
She pursed her lips. “Not necessarily. We have cold polar regions, but all our populated areas are in warm temperate areas.”
“We have locials in warm temperate or tropical locales. It’s just that Deseret isn’t one of those. Some of us like the seasonal changes. If someone like K’gaio becomes Coordinator”—I shrugged—“the welcoming locial would probably be Kelang. It’s warm and damp there.”
“How did you get to be Coordinator? We really don’t know anything about how Old Earth’s society has evolved. It’s been a long time.” Kemra tried a smile, and I wished she hadn’t. She was worse than I at dissembling.
Keiko knocked perfunctorily at the door and entered with a tray containing a bottle of chilled Selastiorini, two glasses, sliced winter apples, and alternating thin white and red cheese wedges. Even carrying all that, her steps were graceful and silent, her black hair perfectly in place.
I stood. “Thank you.”
Kemra also stood and nodded.
Keiko set the tray in the middle of the table. “It wasn’t a problem at all, especially for such a distinguished guest.” She smiled charmingly, the way I wished I could, and I could tell she didn’t like Kemra at all. With a nod to me, Keiko slipped out of the office and closed the door.
Since the wine had already been uncorked, I poured two glasses of the Selastiorini, and handed Kemra one.
“What’s that?”
“Wine,” I answered, recalling that she had not even touched the Whitespring at the welcoming reception.
“Is it poisonous?”
“Hardly. Ethyl alcohol content is about twelve percent, and the various side-contaminants make it flavorful—to those who wish to taste it.” I took a small sip.
Her face went blank—a blankness that signaled a retreat to the hard-wired nets and the repeater or data bank worn on her wide uniform belt.
“Wine—that’s something we lost in The Flight—the grapes, not the techniques,” she said after a moment, the expression/possession returning to her face. “A small amount won’t affect me …”
“And your net will sense if you have more than a small amount,” I finished with a smile.
“Your aide out there doesn’t like me.”
“Most people on Old Earth are wary of cybs,” I pointed out, “just like you’re all wary of Old Earth.”
“It’s not that.” Her eyes were direct, too direct, too like Morgen.
I forced a shrug.
“You never said how you became Coordinator.” She took an infinitesimal sip of the Selastiorini.
“It’s simple enough. The Consensus chose me.”
“What is the Consensus exactly, some sort of representative body?”
“That’s close enough, although … that’s not it exactly, either. Locials and regions have Consensus representatives, and the representatives are the ones that make the choices.” I wasn’t ready to explain all the checks and balances, and the exponential compensatory time required. I almost shuddered at how many years it would take me to work off having been Coordinator. Then I took a small sip of the wine.
“Did you seek the position?” she probed.
“Hardly. It’s not the sort of position anyone seeks—and anyone who did would be suspect.”
“How do you get good leadership if no one wants the job?” She sneaked another sip of the Selastiorini.
“Fear.” I laughed. “People accept the positions, if they’re good, because they fear the alternatives if they don’t do their best. It doesn’t always work, but it works better than anything else we’ve tried.” I decided against mentioning that Coordinator was a sometime position. This time, while waiting for her response, I put a wedge of the red cheese on an apple slice and chewed both slowly, letting the two tangy tastes and differing textures blend together.
Kemra took exactly what I did, but only nibbled at the edge of each, and we sat in momentary silence. The sky lightened as the high clouds outside thinned, and I saw the sunlight on the top of the eastern peaks, but only for a moment.
“It’s hard to believe that you’ve eliminated the power-hungry in your society,” she finally ventured after licking her lips and moistening them with another small sip of the Selastiorini.
What she meant was that the cybs continued to think of the demis as power-hungry. That meant more trouble because the entire chaos that preceded The Flight occurred because the cybs had possessed an inflated image of their own indispensability to society and the universe.
Hell, no living creature is indispensable to anyone or anything—except to himself or a newborn offspring.
“We’ve managed to deal with the problem,” I finally answered.
“We’d be interested in the details.”
“It’s simple enough. We developed a philosophical credo and applied it consistently. We accept that morality, power, and consensus are the underpinnings for any society and work to maintain all three in balance. Trust and mutual respect are, in a way, the mortar that hold the other three together.”
“Every modern society has tried that, and most have failed,” the cyb navigator pointed out.
“Actually, if you look at history, you’ll find that most gave lip service to them, but few ever applied them. The problem with most past societies was that they insisted that either control or freedom was the paramount requirement of society, and neither works.”
“Still the same old dictatorial demis, I see.” Her tone was ironic, rather than bitter.
“Hardly.” I forced a laugh. “We offer great freedom. We just don’t place it first. The first freedom in primitive society, after all, is the freedom to starve or die. Most cultures rejected that freedom. They also rejected the freedom to kill others.” I took a sip, a longer one than I should have, from the goblet. “Yet they proclaimed freedom as the central tenet of their cultures. The first goal of a culture is survival, both short and long term. A culture that is too permissive or too restrictive cannot survive, nor can a culture that cannot agree on its morality. That’s where we started.” I set down the glass.
“Is this great philosophical credo set in print somewhere? It would be … interesting to study, if it isn’t too technical.”
“We call it The Paradigms of Power. There are seven or eight paragraphs, that’s all. I’ll get you a copy in the next day or so.” I wasn’t about to give her the Construct, because the cybs would have totally misunderstood it. I could have had Keiko get a copy of the Paradigms while we were talking, but the more I could stall her, and the cybs, the better, because we needed time to get the full station system up and running. The defense system would work without the Delta and Kappa stations, but both the strain and potential casualties would be higher. Besides, the more time the cybs spent on Old Earth, the greater the possibilities of avoiding actual armed conflicts. At least, that was what Arielle calculated. I wasn’t that convinced of the comps’ analyses. My own intuition said the cybs wanted an out and out battle no matter what. Either way, we needed time.
“You don’t have one nearby?”
“The Paradigms were developed centuries ago—actually longer. While it’s accessible through all the nets, hard copies take a bit longer. We avoid paperwork, and there’s actually not a printer in my office.”
“I suppose it’s in everyone’s interest to take some time in feeling out the situation.”
I grinned. “Absolutely.”
She took another small sip of the Selastiorini. The level of the wine had hardly dropped at all, and her dry lips had barely smudged the rim of the goblet. “Why do all the Old Colonies call Earth the Planet of Death?”
“That dates back to the Rebuilt Hegemony, when Old Earth was more … uncontrolled than it is now. That’s one reason why we left the Cherkrik ruins.”
“Those are the ruins on the other side of the mountains northeast of here? From when do they date?”
“From the period of The Flight. It’s still sobering to tour them.”
A long pause followed, and her eyes glazed. I could pick up the general sense of a relayed conference, including disagreements, but I couldn’t catch the details, and I had a hard enough time looking blank as I strained to cross the barriers between the net systems.
“Could I tour them—say, tomorrow?” The green eyes remained hard.
I frowned for an instant. “If you wish.”
“We can take one of our landers.”
That was a bribe of sorts, letting me have a chance to see their technology, and an implied and false hint of cooperation, but I smiled. “Fine.”
“You never did answer my question about the Planet of Death.”
“I guess I didn’t. Our forbearers used their abilities to create an impression that prolonged habitation on Old Earth wasn’t healthy for those not born here.” I laughed. “We’ve never bothered to correct that impression, since sometimes it still isn’t.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“The ecological balance is both more fragile and more hostile than would have been the case without the disruptions of the time of chaos. Making the environment less hostile would increase the fragility, maybe push it into a degrading spiral. So we live with it.”
“That’s a general statement. How about some details?” The green eyes flashed, with an impatience similar to Morgen’s, though Kemra’s words were far harsher than Morgen would ever have used. The similarity/dissimilarity contrasts were disconcerting.
I swallowed another gulp of wine, and refilled my goblet, tweaking up my metabolic rate before answering.
“I don’t know what
your records show about the ecology of Old Earth,” I began, ignoring her impatience, “but generally, that ecology was diverse and complex. Take predators. NorAm had a range of predators, large cats like the present cougar, amphibian predators, canine-related—”
“Canine?”
“Ancestors of the dogs.” Dogs were extinct, a casualty of the modified Thimeser virus that wiped out wolves, dogs, coyotes, and even some of the rodent species like beavers. “That left a lot of ecological niches, and there were mutations that stabilized before we really got the meleysen program going. So our biggest predators are the bears, vorpals, the kalirams, and the cougars, and they’re all—except maybe the bears—a lot nastier than anything that preceded them. The bears are just smarter. We’ve seen a gradual increase in size among a number of the arthropods, and the rodents that survived are also bigger and tougher, and nothing seemed to stop the snakes. Scorpions and red centipedes attack in groups or packs, and they can be fatal unless you’re carrying antidote kits.” I didn’t mention that such fatalities referred generally to drafts and outsiders.
“Perhaps a visit to the ruins will be even more useful than I’d thought.” Kemra’s fingers touched her chin, one gesture I didn’t recognize. After a pause, she cleared her throat. “Unlike some of the other demis, almost back-to-the-soil types, you seem to like technology—or not dislike it,” she said. “Don’t you fly a flitter?”
“I have a flitter.” I wondered where they’d dug that up, although it wasn’t a secret. Maybe she’d just been on one of the cyb landers when I’d touched down at the locial.
“Why don’t more people?”
“It’s time-consuming.”
She shook her head, as I knew she would. “Air travel of almost any sort is faster.”
“We compute total time in all uses—manufacturing, maintenance, net support—and then require comptime in locial support.” I grinned. “It’s amazing how much technology proves not to be time-saving when the user has to pay from his or her own time and resources.”
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