Adiamante

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Hydrocarb fuel won’t hurt, if we can refine any in that volume,” offered Crucelle.

  “What he wants has the same specs as what the Coordinator’s flitter—or anyone’s—uses. The volumes are something else again.”

  I shrugged as I walked, keeping my mouth shut and answering on the netlink. “See if you can work it out, Keiko.”

  “What’s the point of all this?” asked darkangel Arielle, slipping into the net like a sudden storm.

  “Stalling them until they see the error of their ways,” I answered. “Or until we’re ready to convince them.”

  “They’re thinking the same way, with all the power recharging and troop drops.” The darkangel offered a snort. “They want to force the error of our ways down our throats with supercharged particle beams or de-energizers.”

  “You have a better idea?” I asked Arielle.

  “You’re the Coordinator.”

  That meant she didn’t.

  “Crucelle? Make sure that the old hardening systems are operational.”

  “Great suggestion for our morale, mighty Coordinator,” offered Keiko.

  “Coordinators have to be honest.”

  “Don’t be quite so honest with the subcommander. They’re still playing your memories,” assessed Keiko, accurately … but painfully. Then, I suspected one of the reasons she was my assistant was because the precise—but caring—Crucelle was looking out for my welfare.

  “Don’t I know it,” I admitted, my eyes focusing on the sandy-haired cyb waiting ahead by the lander ramp, clad in a midweight green wind jacket that would not be heavy enough for our destination.

  “Remember that,” added Crucelle, not quite able to hide his concern.

  I downlinked and smiled at Kemra, ignoring the junior officer standing slightly behind her. “It’s a much better day today.”

  “Yes. Our observers say it’s clear over the ruins as well.”

  “But cold.”

  “The way you’re dressed means I’ll need a heavier jacket.”

  “Probably.” I extracted the thin folder from my case. “I remembered your interest in the Paradigms. There’s also a relatively recent, and mercifully brief, history of Old Earth since The Flight.”

  “Thank you.” She took the folder, but did not open it, and turned to the officer behind her.”Are we ready, Kessek?”

  “Yes, Subcommander.”

  She motioned to the olive-black ramp, and we walked up it into the main cabin, where rows of empty acceleration couches filled the dim space. The lander could have easily carried two hundred marcybs, loaded like livestock or cordwood, which was about the way the cybs regarded them.

  “We’ll go forward.” Kemra did not look at me.

  Forward of the bulkhead and through a heavy hatch was a smaller compartment, containing a mere half dozen almost luxurious couches, three against the fuselage on each side. In the middle was an open space, but the lines in the deck gave the impression of a large extendable table of some sort.

  “Take any seat.”

  I sat in the left forward couch-seat. Unusually supple, it was covered with a black synthetic leather. Kemra sat in the forward couch on the right side.

  Behind us, the ramp whined up and into place. Then Kessek closed the hatch separating the troop compartment from the officers’ space, and without looking at either of us, marched forward into the cockpit, closing a second hatch with a dull thud.

  Deciding to take the risk, I let my net-enhanced senses probe the lander as Kessek began his checklist for lift-off. Fuselage—enhanced metalite-boron-composite. Propulsion—fan-ram-scram screamers, with magboost. The magfield boost surprised me a bit. The delta wings contained antimatter pellet launchers, although I couldn’t sense any pellets. That wasn’t surprising, given their weight. Also concealed in the wings were two pair of heavy-duty, high velocity slugthrowers, with plenty of ammunition—the nasty osmiridian-depleted uranium tipped stuff. The guns were just for emergencies, since the lander’s real military purpose was destruction of wide areas of landscape, presumably inhabited areas rather than hardened military targets.

  Lovely people, the cybs.

  A thin whine grew into a larger whine, and the lander began to move. I tapped the locial control frequency and got Kessek’s transmission.

  “Deseret locial, this is lander one. Ready to taxi for departure.”

  “Lander one. You’re cleared to the north end of radial two zero zero.”

  After a moment, another transmission—net-to-net—followed. “Gibson, lander one lifting for the ruins with the subcommander and the demi Coordinator. Interrogative instructions.”

  “That’s negative, lander one. Follow observation plan.”

  “Stet.”

  The lander kept rolling northward.

  “What do you think?” asked Kemra, the slightest gleam in her eye.

  “It’s a rather impressive way to transport two individuals.”

  “We’d like to impress you,” she answered.

  “I gathered that.” Mere size and brute firepower weren’t that impressive in demonstrating technological prowess or sophistication, but they were successful in suggesting what the cybs had in mind for Old Earth.

  Kemra fell silent as the lander began to accelerate, the whine of the fan turbines turning into more of a thundering rush as the lightly laden lander angled into the sky, almost as steeply as a magdrive shuttle. Before long Kessek reconfigured the engines into scramset, and the external sound bled back into a dull rumble.

  The blank oblong on the bulkhead in front of Kemra shimmered, then began to display a panorama of the terrain in front of and below the lander; the white-covered mountains and darker valleys northeast of Parwon.

  Kemra glanced at the view for a moment, then opened the folder and read the sheet that held the Paradigms. Finally, she looked at me. “That’s it?”

  “I didn’t say it was complicated. Principles usually aren’t.” I offered a smile. “In the beginning, the implementation was nastier than a pack of vorpals. Sometimes, it’s still a problem.”

  “In what way?” She closed the folder and brushed back a lock of short sandy hair, an unfamiliar gesture.

  “The whole issue of power. Some people won’t accept society’s values except at the focus of a weapons laser. Others never will. If we overuse force, then no one will accept the society. If we don’t use it, we have no society.”

  “Nice generalizations. What about some specifics? Cases?”

  “You sound like a true rat-comp.”

  She raised both eyebrows.

  “Rationalist comprehender. The facts, please, nothing but the facts.” I shook my head, trying to ignore the distractions of the lander’s noisy net and the rumbling of the engines. “At first, children were the biggest problem. How do you deal with them? They’re innocents, relatively. Wayneclint’s successor, Terese, decided to finesse the issue. She gathered a Consensus on a replacement birth policy and enforced it with reversible female sterilization after two children.”

  “Rather chauvinistic. How could she enforce that?”

  “Easily enough. Anyone who didn’t comply lost their children, got forcibly sterilized, and dumped on one of the swept islands. That’s where we still put malcontents.”

  “That’s barbaric.”

  “Let’s see,” I answered. “It’s civilized to let a society overbreed and destroy the ecology, raise interpersonal tensions to the point that violence is endemic, and stretch resources to the point that all too many children are ill-fed, uneducated, diseased, and without any hope of ever reaching their potential? Or would you prefer millions of abortions? That happened, you know, before the chaos. But it’s barbaric to require people to limit their offspring?”

  “What if a child dies or something?”

  “Reversible sterilization,” I repeated. “How do you handle the problem? By expansion? Or by market forces?”

  “Market forces?”

  “Economics—only those
who can afford children can have them … or some variant.”

  “Cybs are rational enough that we don’t need such brutal measures.”

  I nodded. Simple enough. If a cyb couldn’t access the net, and use it proficiently, then access to partners was nil. Likewise, a common net meant everyone knew everything—which was a different form of consensus, power socially imposed. Plus, the cybs had never had to deal with a large population of draffs, and that made matters easier.

  “How do you know what I’m talking about?” Kemra asked.

  So I told her what I’d been thinking, and her mouth opened and then closed. “I never said that.”

  “It’s basically true, isn’t it?”

  “You make it sound so … compulsive.”

  I forced a laugh. “Your society has survived. That means you have to follow most of the Paradigms of Power. You may have a different morality and a different way to apply power, but it’s the same in the end. Survival means acceptance of a desired moral structure and the use of some sort of force to maintain it against any small minority that would undermine it.” I shrugged.

  “What about large minorities?”

  “If you won’t or can’t enforce or adapt the morality to reduce discontent, you’ll have some form of civil war, societal breakup, revolution, or all three.”

  “I’d like to think about that.” She looked toward the screen before and above her.

  Self-delusion about the applicability of the Paradigms is also an all-too-human trait. We all like to think that we aren’t slaves to belief and that we aren’t governed by power, or fear of power, but most of us aren’t that altruistic, especially deep-down. Shared morality is a way to survive, and it’s hard to overcome our basic genetic hardware. Some never do.

  Instead of resuming the conversation, Kemra opened the folder again and began to read the history I’d provided. That might not prove any more palatable to her than my observations on the cyb society I’d never even seen.

  Before long, the desolate ground appearing in the screen indicated our approach to the ruins.

  Kessek was smooth. I had to hand him that, the way he greased that big lander right onto the Cherkrik locial’s strip, even in what seemed to be a stiff crosswind.

  The front hatch slid open, and Kessek called back, “I’m lowering the ramp, Subcommander. Do you have any idea how long you’ll be?”

  Kemra looked at me.

  “If you want an in-depth look, it’ll take a minimum of two hours, and maybe four.”

  “At least three hours, Kessek,” she answered.

  “You can close up and come with us,” I offered. “Or relax in the locial tower. There’s a small café there—no charge to visitors.”

  “You can have the ruins,” the pilot answered.

  Kemra opened a small locker on the bulkhead before her and withdrew a belt and a handgun. “I assume you don’t mind. You had mentioned the ruins are wild.” She crossed to another locker and extracted a heavy jacket that was slightly too large for her. After stripping off her lighter jacket to reveal a set of informal greens and donning the greenish-brown heavier jacket, she transferred a pair of gloves from her wind jacket to the new one.

  “Hardly. I’d made arrangements for defense also, but the handgun is fine.”

  I followed Kemra out of the lander and down the ramp into the cold and bright sunlight in front of the white tower that fronted the only occupied structures in hundreds of klicks.

  “Could I tour the ruins—tomorrow?” Such a simple and meaningless demand, but there we were at the Cherkrik Station, the only station on Old Earth not serving a populated locial.

  A gust of wind lifted white dust from the equally white permacrete, and the wind’s faint whistle and the cooling of the lander’s engines were the only sounds. The large blood-red inscription emblazoned on the side of the tower facing the landing strip remained the same: “Lest We Forget …”

  With only a glance at the inscription, Kemra turned back toward the ramp, olive green-black metal, her net crackling around her. “Going offnet now … place is eerie … can almost sense old nets, old energies, and the damned ruins stretch for klicks and klicks.”

  An assent flicked back to her from the lander pilot.

  “Are we ready?” asked Kemra.

  “Coordinator?” Standing by a vivid green electrocart was a dark thin woman in a trim gray singlesuit.

  “Yes,” I answered, both verbally and net-net. “I’m Ecktor. This is Subcommander Kemra from the Vereal Union.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Subcommander. I’m Dienate, Cherkrik locial logistics officer.” Her brown eyes turned to me. “Here’s the cart you requested. It’s fully charged. The provisions are in the front locker.”

  The cart wasn’t much more than an electric drive system powered by fuel cells and a backup battery, four seats in two sets of two, and a windscreen.

  “Thank you. The lander pilot may need some refreshments … .”

  “We’d be happy to oblige. It’s always good to see a fresh face, especially in the cold months.” A crooked grin creased her face, showing brilliant white teeth against her near-black complexion.

  “Thank you.”

  Kemra echoed her thanks, and Dienate nodded and smiled. I walked over to the cart and checked it out. Two rifles were racked in the electrocart, both slugthrowers, with the simultaneous twin-magazine option, either of spray-shells or solid-expanders.

  “I can see you haven’t given up heavy weapons, even on peaceful Old Earth,” the cybnav said sardonically. “Do you arm troops with something even heavier?” Kemra’s hand strayed to her holstered handgun, a slugthrower rather than a dart gun or a stunner.

  By then, I could catch her words reverberating on her self-net before she spoke them, but said nothing until after her last word. No sense in alerting her and giving up that minimal advantage.

  “We have a few of these for defense,” I said. “But we don’t have troops the way you do. Hop in.” I didn’t want to talk about weapons and the way we handled defense, especially not before she’d really seen the ruins, and not after her quick dismissal of the warning inscription.

  “ … probably have more than we’ve ever had,” she subvocalized.

  I forced a smile. It could be a long tour, even if it were short.

  After a quick check of the emergency beacon, and to make sure Kemra was seated securely in the right hand seat, I used the floor throttle to ease the cart across the dusty permacrete. The little four-wheeler whined westward on the slight upgrade past the tower and along the lane that separated the dozen small dwellings from the three shop buildings. Each dwelling had a walled rear yard, mainly to protect the gardens and fruit trees from the climatic extremes, and the occasional vorpal.

  Fifty meters of flat and cracked permacrete separated the rear walls of the houses from the beginning of the ruins. I turned the electrocart left on the former ground-car highway and we bounced southward, the landing field to the east and a mixture of roofless ruined structures to the west, interspersed with low hummocks where houses built of wood or other degradable materials had once stood.

  Small piles of frost and snow lay in the shadows on the north side of the ancient remnants, but even by winter’s end the accumulation would not be that great.

  A few stick-like dried weeds rose from cracks in the ancient surface, and an occasional low bush protruded from the frozen dust—probably creosote or something even tougher. Nothing else grew, and all the old trees, except for the handful of mutants on the other side of the Barrier, had long since died and crumbled into dust.

  The ancients had left the area too dry and too infertile for grasses, and we’d halted the ecobuilding efforts at the perimeter of the ruins to preserve the devastation. Some things cannot be explained, but have to be experienced.

  With a disinterested expression that never varied, Kemra just looked as the electrocart whined southward. Once we passed the end of the locial’s landing field, the roofless ruins
and low hummocks appeared on both sides of the ancient byway.

  Less than half a klick south of the locial field, I slowed the cart and eased it across a narrow metal span that ridged a crevasse in the old road. Beneath the replacement span, the dark line of the bottom of the crevasse was a good two hundred meters down.

  “Was this caused by … weapons damage?” asked Kemra.

  “No. Much of the subsoil here is hydrostatically unstable clay. There are some faults nearby, and the ancients diverted water from a number of mountain rivers. Then they used a good fraction of that water to support an artificial garden-like ecosphere—grass, trees. Of course, the water eventually lubricated those subsurface faults, and that transformed the clay into the equivalent of jelly.” I shrugged. “Some of the damage happened long after these were ruins, but the fragmentary records that survived show some occurred while people were living here.”

  Kemra fell silent again as the electrocart began to climb a long and gradual grade. I halted at the top. From where we sat, on an ancient highway bisecting a barren space that might have been a park, we had a panorama of the ruins.

  The rows of square-cornered houses, most still larger than ours—mine now, I mentally corrected myself—went on for klick after klick. Some few still had roofs. Some did not. Some had walls. Most had collapsed into heaps of plastic and other nondegradable rubble. Still others were but holes in the ground.

  A shiny black line—the Barrier—rose above the ruins almost due west of us, but Kemra stared southward across the brown- and white-dusted desolation, looking toward the broken towers that still jutted into the sky like the decayed teeth of the past. Fragments of reflected light still glittered from some of the towers. Those on the north side slumped, half-melted, supposedly destroyed by an orbital solar array that had been blasted out of existence millennia earlier. The visible damage didn’t include the toxins and nerve spores that only required water and organic contact to resume their search-and-destroy missions.

  “Can we go there?” She pointed to the towers.