Elfrida thought, He’s seen a poll or something that changed his mind. As the President’s favored candidate for UNVRP director, Dr. Hasselblatter would have access to the best polling data. If he had really changed his mind about resettling the community, it had to be because he thought it would help him get elected.
“I’m trying to save UNVRP from blundering into a firestorm of criticism. Too many people already see the Venus Project as a waste of money at best, anti-human at worst. We have to prove that we care.”
“Yes, sir.” He was talking as if he had already won the election.
“As a low-information voter, you’re an ideal test subject. Vid this.”
“Sir, I’m not a voter …”
“Yes, you are. Residency is the only qualification, and in another two weeks, you’ll technically be a resident.”
Dr. Hasselblatter snapped his fingers.
The illusion of velvet drapes covering one wall vanished. An instant’s glimpse of scabrous insulation tiles was replaced by a panorama of Mercury’s landscape. Across the grey rock strode Dr. Hasselblatter in a suit and tie. “This,” he intoned at deafening volume, “is the Caloris Planitia today.”
“Papa,” shouted Dr. Hasselblatter’s offspring. “I can’t hear my Lego.”
“Turn it down,” shouted his father.
“And this,” said his vid image more quietly, “could be the Caloris Planitia in a few years.”
The camera panned to an extraordinary structure. An elevated railroad marched across the landscape. It had not just one track, but a dozen. A pile of reflective metal slid along them, adorned with spires and flying bridges that connected its various bulges. Tiny gliders zipping around it provided scale.
“A moving city,” Dr. Hasselblatter boomed in voiceover. “A work of art. An achievement to rival the Parthenon, the Pyramids, the spacescrapers of Astana!”
The horizon behind the city-on-rails glowed with the gaseous searchlights that heralded sunrise.
“These tracks run all the way around the planet. The intense heat of the sun causes them to expand, pushing the city along at a walking pace, keeping it within the safety of the twilight zone.”
Legos bounced off the city, making it look as if bits were falling off it. Dr. Hasselblatter’s son had a future as an art critic.
“Stop the vid,” the real Dr. Hasselblatter yelled. “I’m not happy with that phrasing. ‘The twilight zone’ … I think that may have been used before. Look it up.”
“The whole concept’s been used before, sir,” said a staffer. “It was first put forward by the futurist Kim Stanley Robinson in the early 21st century.”
“Ja, ja, but we’re promising to make it a reality. That’s the difference between science fiction and an election campaign.” Dr. Hasselblatter turned to Elfrida. “Well, what do you think?”
She belatedly understood that they’d been looking at Dr. Hasselblatter’s election platform. “I think you should have a spacesuit on in the vid, sir. It kind of damages the believability quotient if you’re just … out there in the vacuum.”
“You may be right. Trouble is, if I’ve got a spacesuit on, they can’t see my face.”
Hasselblatter junior shouted, “Papa! Papa! Jimbo’s running for election, too!” He held up a Lego man. It squeaked, “Don’t tread on me.”
“Frown,” said Dr. Hasselblatter. “This is what happens when you teach them about democracy.”
Elfrida gazed at the image of the city on rails. This wasn’t terraforming. It wasn’t even paraterraforming. It was a planetary-scale boondoggle waiting to happen.
“Was there anything else, Goto?”
I won’t tell him about Vlajkovic’s plot, she impulsively decided. Not now.
She didn’t grok the city on rails. But other people might. And if enough of them voted for Dr. Hasselblatter, he would win the election. And if he won the election, he would reverse Charles K. Pope’s decision to evacuate the community. Vlajkovic and his people would get to stay. And no one would ever have to know how close they’d come to taking a terrible, irreversible step.
And the ISA won’t know that I almost got mixed up in another horrible carnage-y fiasco.
Because there wouldn’t be a horrible carnage-y fiasco.
Anyway, if I have to, I can always tell Dr. H. later.
The decision lightened her heart, put a smile on her face.
“No, sir. That was all.”
On her way out of the suite, she trod on a Lego, which squeaked, “Watch it, you big moo!” Hasselblatter junior giggled.
★
When she got back to their sandcastle, Cydney was already there. Elfrida told her about Dr. Hasselblatter’s flip-flop. Cydney’s agitated reaction reassured her that she wasn’t reading this wrong. It was a big deal.
“He must be conducting his own polling. Dog-damn it!”
Cydney gnawed her manicure, obviously upset. She always liked to have the hottest information before anyone else.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Elfrida said.
“No, what?”
“It means I’ll have to campaign for my boss.”
xii.
Eyes gleamed red in the Cytherean darkness. Rats sidled towards the nutriblocks that Vlajkovic had mashed up and set out beneath the granddaddy of all the lamp trees. The light from its fruit flashed along their sleek sides.
“All I want to know is did you snitch?” Vlajkovic said.
Elfrida had forced herself to seek him out as soon as Cydney was asleep. It was now midnight, local time. The test hab slumbered. But Vlajkovic was out in the desert, testing a new rat poison.
“No,” she said. “I did not snitch.”
The warm wind from the the top of the shaft blew around them, scented with the musty smell of the lamp trees. The clonking of cow bells punctuated the peaceful silence. I want to stay here, she thought passionately. I want to stay.
“Dr. Hasselblatter’s on your side. He’s a better ally than Doug. He’s on the Presidential Advisory Council.”
“He flip-flopped once? He could flip-flop again.”
“He’s got it all worked out. He’s going to revive tourism to replace the jobs that will be lost with the Phase Five ramp. Then as regards the R&D division, there’ll be an initiative to identify commercial applications for these things—” she plucked the edge of the carpet Vlajkovic was sitting on. “And whatever else Richard is developing.”
“Whenever someone offers me exactly what I want,” Vlajkovic said, “my response is, ‘Do you think I’m an Earthling?’ I was born on Mercury. On this planet, the sun is a lethal force. You learn pretty fast that the universe is not on your side. Zoom.”
The last command was to his retinal implants. Elfrida’s contacts did not have a zoom function. She dimly made out the shapes of rats climbing the bole of the lamp tree. They had spurned the poisoned nutriblocks, and were going after their favorite food: lampfruits.
“Curses,” Vlajkovic said. “The guys in the lab swore it was odor-free, hyper-palatable. Back to the drawing-board.”
He got up and slung his carpet around his shoulders. Elfrida tried again. “You’re pinning your hopes on Patel, the NEO candidate. But she can’t win.”
“Why?”
“Because … because. She’s a doctor.”
“Pediatrician.”
“Pediatrician. From a tribe of semi-nomadic NEO water traders. She’s no one. She can’t be the director of UNVRP, OK? They wouldn’t let it happen.”
“A vote is a vote.”
“Doggone it, Mike, you can’t be this naïve! Or do you expect Patel to lose? Want her to? So you’ll have an excuse to start fragging shit?”
Vlajkovic started back towards the village, walking fast.
Elfrida leapt after him. She was too angry now to be frightened. “There are only two candidates who can win. Dr. Seth or Dr. Hasselblatter. Tell me that isn’t an easy choice.”
“No,” Vlajkovic said. “Actually, it’s
not.”
“What, have you got some kind of atavistic loyalty thing going on? Or are you just prejudiced against Dr. H because he’s from Earth?”
The village slid around the bend in the shaft. Flashing light silhouetted the roofs of the sandcastles. Elfrida chased Vlajkovic into the central square . Everyone was watching Dr. Hasselblatter’s campaign vid on a big screen carried out from one of the labs.
Dr. Hasselblatter had taken her advice about dressing his avatar in an EVA suit. But it was still a vid about a city on rails running around Mercury’s equator. Laughter rose from the crowd.
Vlajkovic, cowled in his carpet, said, “It’s as if something about this planet makes people think of theme parks.”
Elfrida sensed that he wasn’t talking to her. She saw Gates coming towards them, carrying Bette in a snugglepack on his front. “Yes,” Gates said. “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards Disneyland.”
“Snort,” said Vlajkovic. Elfrida said, “Confused smile?”
“Never mind,” Vlajkovic said. “Inside joke. You have to be an American.”
If Elfrida’s confused smile had been real rather than an emoticode, she would have looked more confused than ever. Vlajkovic and Gates weren’t Americans … were they?
She tried again, focusing on Gates this time. “Dr. H is on your side. Honestly, he is. He cares.”
“And he just happens to be your boss,” Gates pointed out, with devastating mildness.
“That’s got nothing to do with it!”
Vlajkovic pulled her away from his husband and daughter. He dragged her over to the edge of the square, where the cynics were hanging out on the steps of the gengineering lab. Elfrida realized with a sickening lurch that she was once again surrounded by Vlajkovic’s friends.
“I trusted you!” Vlajkovic hissed.
He was still angry at her. He would probably be angry at her for the rest of their lives.
“So you hate me!” Elfrida hissed back. “Fine! But these are my people, too! I won’t let you ruin their lives!”
“You don’t understand. No one can stop the eviction! Not from inside the system.”
“And Patel’s an outsider, is that your point? Which is exactly why she can’t get elected, and Dr. Hasselblatter can!”
Vlajkovic shook his head. “The Phase Five ramp is just an excuse.” Suddenly, he sounded defeated.
Gates had come after them. Vlajkovic went up to him and lifted Bette out of her snugglepack.
“Look at her. Look at her.” He held Bette up by the armpits. She woke, scrunching up her face to cry. “Now do you understand?”
Elfrida looked at the fair-haired toddler, who was now emitting lusty screams. She looked at Vlajkovic’s friends, sitting on the lab steps. It was so dark in here that she never had looked closely at them before. Now she saw that there was a sameness to their faces. All of them were melanin-challenged, which was the polite way of saying they all had European ancestry.
“You’re purebloods,” she said.
Gates snatched the screaming Bette away from Vlajkovic. He followed her with his eyes, empty-handed.
“Oh, it’s worse than that,” Gates said, clipped. “We’re Americans.”
★
“I don’t understand,” Elfrida said.
“How not?” Gates said.
“How come? I mean, how come you’re purebloods?” This was not something people talked about. She didn’t know how to talk about it.
“Let’s start with a bit of history,” Gates said. “Once upon a time, the United States was a nation of immigrants. All races, all colors. But they didn’t always get along that great. For instance, there was a period when the melanin-challenged portion of the population enslaved the rest.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. The country got past that, but the tensions never went away. Economic inequality perpetrated racial segregation, and it turned out to be really sticky. Even in the twenty-second century, the richest 0.01% of the country looked like us.”
Vlajkovic spread his hands. They were still sitting on the steps of the lab. “And that’s what we are.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’re descended from the richest Americans of the twenty-second century.” He flicked rat droppings off the step where Bette was crawling. “Big comedown in a century and some, huh? Space will do that to you: take everything you’ve got, and ask for more.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“When UNVRP first set up here, they had no budget and no staff,” Gates said patiently. “The cheapest solution was to hire locally. So, we’re descended from the people that Wrightstuff, Inc. palmed off on their charity project, as they saw UNVRP at the time. They did not anticipate Charles K. Pope. But as Pope secured more and more funding, and developed the Venus Project to its current scale, he kept on hiring from Wrightstuff. It was a condition of the agreement to let UNVRP operate here.”
“So we’re the unemployable descendants of the ultrarich,” Vlajkovic cackled. “And they wonder why this community is a mess.”
Elfrida still had questions, but she wasn’t sure where to start asking them, and she already had enough new information to last her a while. “Wow,” she said. “I’m … I don’t know. Sorry?”
“Are you being fucking sarcastic?” Vlajkovic said. “You fucking dare? We’re about to be evacuated because we’re purebloods. A circumstance over which we have zero control.”
Gates put a hand on his arm. “Calm down, Mike.”
“It’s true,” Vlajkovic said. “The execs are pretending it’s not. But you, Goto—“ he was talking to her again— “you don’t get to pretend anymore.”
Elfrida shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Come on. UNVRP wouldn’t do that.”
But she knew that all over the solar system, hiring directors were running scared after the 4 Vesta calamity. The PLAN targeted purebloods, a ‘policy’ that the Heidegger program’s rampage on 4 Vesta had made gruesomely clear. The private sector was now desperately seeking to filter purebloods out of their workforces, in hopes that that would save them from being attacked, without falling afoul of anti-discrimination laws. She just hadn’t thought the UN would ever stoop so low.
“Get a fucking clue,” Vlajkovic said.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Elfrida said wearily. She stared at the children sitting on the ground in front of the big screen. They were not all pale-skinned. “Just tell me, how many of you are purebloods, exactly?”
“Seventy, eighty percent?”
“Eighty percent,” Elfrida echoed. The ratio of purebloods in the overall population was one in five.
“But we’re a package deal,” said a lab worker, leaning over to join the conversation. He obviously had a multiracial heritage, but he shared the ‘sameness’ Elfrida had noticed in the others, a kinship of the soul expressed in the flesh. “How’re they going to evict the purebloods selectively? Hello, ethnic-discrimination lawsuits.”
“Maybe the President doesn’t approve,” Elfrida said. “And parachuting Dr. Hasselblatter into the race is her way of stopping it.”
“Could be,” Vlajkovic said, shrugging. “Doesn’t change the fact his campaign is pure sci-fi.”
The children in front of the screen squealed in excitement.
Elfrida craned sideways so she could see what they were looking at. A rollercoaster plunged around the domes of the city on rails. The logo on the bonnet of the first car depicted a blazing sunrise above the words MERCURY, INC. The viewpoint changed to a camera apparently mounted in the first car. Elfrida could see that to a kid raised in an underground hab, that looked like it would be the most fun ever.
“On the other hand,” Vlajkovic said thoughtfully.
Now the screen showed people flying around on jet-powered broomsticks.
“Quidditch! Quidditch!”
“There are a lot of kids in this hab,” Vlajkovic observed.
“Yeah,” Gates said. “And even more in Mt. Gotham.�
��
“And the NEOs,” someone else said.
“Shame they can’t vote,” Elfrida said.
“Yeah, they can.” Suddenly, Vlajkovic grinned. “Minimum voting age is six.”
★
“Wheeee!”
“Pull in your legs, ma’am!”
Elfrida balled herself up. Bouncing in Mercury’s low gravity, she rolled down a steep slope at the eastern edge of Borealis Planitia. “Wheeee!” she exclaimed again. The three children cartwheeled ahead of her, all four legs spread and locked like spokes. Their whirling feet churned up the top layer of regolith. A contrail of pulverized rock clouds trailed behind them.
At the bottom of the slope, they righted themselves and began running again. Elfrida stretched into a gallop, all four legs leaving the ground at once. She outdistanced the children. “Come on, you guys,” she urged them. “Can’t catch me!”
“Ma’am, you’re not a very credible adult, are you?” said Boris Clinton, who was eleven.
“If I had a tongue,” Elfrida said, “I’d stick it out at you.”
They were all in suits. In the sense of phavatars. The vinge-classes might look like monsters from a cheap horror vid, but they were very practical for surface operations. They could go as fast as 50 km/h, once you got the hang of running on four legs. And of course, they never got tired.
“Well, you see, we’re used to this,” Jake said. A net sack of cargo flapped under his thorax. He held it on with his clamps—a vestigial pair of middle legs—as they climbed the next hill. Rivulets of shale streamed from their crampons. Their headlamps lanced across the pitted rock.
“But this is seriously fun,” Elfrida said. “It’s kind of like riding a rollercoaster. You know, like the one we’re going to build?”
“For the tourists,” Boris said.
“And for you guys, too. Aren’t you excited about that? And the quidditch league, and the herds of robot bison …”
“That stuff is for kids,” said Lena Duggan, who was ten.
They’ve been forced to grow up too fast, Elfrida thought sadly. “OK, I’m going to try that cartwheeling thing. I never could turn a cartwheel IRL, but … Yee-ha!”
The Mercury Rebellion: A Science Fiction Thriller (The Solarian War Saga Book 3) Page 10