Starswarm

by Jerry Pournelle

  There was another long silence.

  "As for instance the Foundation proxies?" Trent asked.

  "Whatever I must do."

  "You're serious, aren't you, Doc?"

  "Very much so."

  "So maybe we better deal. Doc, I can't promise you not to mine the area because that's going to happen no matter what I do. If I try to stop it, we'll lose the takeover bid for sure, and the new management will do it anyway. Accept that. It's true."

  "I'll accept it for talking purposes," Dr. Henderson said. "Pending confirmation."

  "That's a pretty suspicious thing to say to me!"

  "I am a pretty suspicious man, Mr. Trent. And an increasingly desperate one."

  "All right. But accept it, because it's true. Now my offer. Don't give me any static about the Foundation's proxies, and I'll do my best to delay things. I can promise you four years, and I can try for four more. No way it'll go beyond eight, but you won't get that much time from Hilliard."

  "Four years," Dr. Henderson said. "Four years, and my life's work is down the drain."

  "Maybe more," Trent said. "And I'll do what I can to save the lake—"

  "Which probably won't be good enough."

  "Well, it may not be, but we won't have to mine near the lake for another couple of years after we get started up here. We'll probably need the water for the refinery, but it'll take some time to build that. Give it maybe ten years. Look, Doc, these are tough times. Every company is under pressure, us more than most. Look at it my way. First we have to win this proxy vote. To do that I'll have to promise to exploit hell out of all our resources, and I do mean all. Then there's the government. If we don't put enough into the treasury, Washington will revoke our charter and give it to someone else. Hilliard, probably."

  "Washington didn't charter us."

  "No, but Washington has a lot of U.N. votes, and a lot of money to bribe delegates," Trent said. "Want me to go through how it's done? First Washington trumps up some reason for the U.N. to take the charter away from Liechtenstein. We protest, but no one listens. They find some unhappy people here, talk them into complaining. If they have to they send people to be unhappy. Back on Earth, maybe they charge corruption, which wouldn't be hard since it's true enough, you can't do anything without bribing some of the U.N. people. Nobody can. So we bribe a bunch of peanut dictatorships, but they manage to bribe more of them, and the corruption charges stick. So the U.N. puts us under their direct supervision. Then they discover the U.N. bureaucracy can't run Paradise, so they hand the charter to the United States. Or the U.S. takes it on as a mandated action under U.N. charter. That's one scenario. I can think of half a dozen others off the top of my head."

  "But it would take time."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. When there's that much money at stake things can move pretty fast. And don't kid yourself about GWE Earth. Bobbie Rottenberg's a charmer, but he's really not very smart, and he doesn't care much about Paradise in the first place.

  He'd trade Paradise to Hilliard in a minute if he thought that would save his control of the rest of Great Western."

  "Would it?"

  "For a while. They'd probably make that deal. And then there's my stock," Trent said. "I won't go for breaking GWE up. Unless I have to. But running Paradise wasn't my first choice of jobs, you know."

  "The Green party—"

  "The Greens are still trying to recover from the last elections," Trent said. "And you know it. They've got all they can do to hang on to their favorite places on Earth. They won't put resources they don't have into saving a lake they never heard of on a planet they've never seen. Like it or not, Doc, I'm promising you more than anyone else will. Deal?"

  "I will consider your offer."

  "You damn well better do more than consider it, Doc. I'm going to win this proxy fight one way or another, and I don't forget my friends. Or my enemies."

  "Yes, I'm certain of that. Tell me, Mr. Trent, how is it this is happening at all? I thought the Trent family was in complete control of GWE."

  "Trent and LaScala families," Bernard Trent said. "Had control between them, and they always voted together. When my brother Harold married Michelle LaScala that looked like settling the matter. Hal was due for Sweetheart's shares, and Michelle would inherit most of her grandfather's shares. The idea was Hal and Michelle would have kids and leave the smartest one of them enough stock to control the company, make it safe for another couple of generations, which is the best you can hope for in times like this. Only they both died just after Michelle's grandfather did. We think after, and Hal died first, but that's hard to prove. There's a hell of a problem establishing exactly when things happened with interstellar distances involved, so there's a big lawsuit back on Earth claiming Michelle died before Hal. And Michelle left all her shares to her kids, only there aren't any, none we can find anyway. Italian law is different from Liechtenstein law, and both are different from some of the international precedents, so nobody knows who'll get the LaScala shares, and nobody can vote them.

  And Sweetheart—that's our grandmother—is about to have her hundred and eighteenth birthday, and her shares are all tied up in trusts because, let's face it, I think the old gal's pretty bright but there's another lawsuit that says she's senile, and they won't let her change her will, and—anyway, what with all the litigation there's a huge chunk of GWE stock that nobody can vote. That's why the Hilliards think they have a chance. Pour me some of that brandy, Doc. Thinking about this gives me a pain."

  "Here."

  "Thanks. You like it out here, don't you?"

  "I like studying xenoecology," Henderson said. "And the Starswarm ecology is certainly the most interesting one I know of. And it may be a bit dull out here, but it's better than the crowds and laws and regulations on Earth. I suppose Earth is nicer for the very rich."

  "Well, having money makes it easier," Trent said. "And maybe it's just the money, but I'd sure rather be on Earth. That was the deal I had with my brother Harold. He'd let me run things back on Earth so long as I gave him everything he wanted out here. Hell, that was fine with me! I never would have come out here in the first place. Only now he's gone, the family's got Leonora's husband, that Bobbie Rottenberg creep, running the show in Milan, and I'm stuck out here looking for a way back home. But it doesn't look like I'll find one."

  "So you need the mineral strike—"

  "Well, yeah, if Rottenberg keeps screwing things up back home and I keep making profits out here, the family may reconsider."

  "No wonder you're in a hurry to exploit that mine. So how can I trust you to delay things?"

  "Think about it, Doc. You think the Hilliard group has any less reason to make a quick profit? If they take over GWE they'll be so far in debt they'll be desperate—may even sell off the mineral rights. And me, I'll be rich, out of a job, and on my way back to Earth with nothing to look forward to but be a playboy at Lake Como. My wife would like that a lot. Sure, I need quick profits, but I'm not as desperate as Hilliard will be."

  "All right. We have a deal," Dr. Henderson said. "You guarantee me four years, and you give me your word you'll make your best efforts to get me as much more time after that as you can. And whatever happens, there will be no mining operations near the lake for ten years."

  "Well, that last is—"

  "Eight, then."

  "Deal. Nothing starts here for four years, and nothing near the lake for eight. Now give me that proxy."

  "I will."

  "A lot can happen in eight years, Doc," Bernard Trent said.

  "Yes. I'm counting on that. Maybe the horse will learn to sing-"

  "A lot of good, a lot of bad," Trent said. "Lousy times. You don't much like the idea of the world being run by rich people, do you?"

  "I confess that having the most important things in my life decided by people whose only qualification is that they inherited money is distasteful."

  "Yeah, now think about how it'll be when the only qualification is that they've got hol
d of money by using the law to take it away from someone," Trent said. "Sure, there's smart ones and fools in the Trent family, but it's old money, and old money thinks ahead. Some more than others. My father worried about his grandchildren's generation. So did my brother and his wife. Harold was smart, but Michelle was the really smart one on that team. They looked ahead. Maybe I don't look quite as far ahead as they did, not all the time anyway, but I try. What you're getting now is the world run by new money. Nobody in the Hilliard group ever thought past the next quarterly report. And that's bad, Doc. Those are people who'll do anything to get ahead. Anything to get more money. People call me a shortsighted greedy son of a bitch, but I'm a pussycat compared to them!"

  PART THREE: Memories And Messages

  How much do we remember? Sometimes we surprise ourselves by remembering things we didn't know we knew. Could this mean we remember everything. Some older theories of psychology have supposed this to be true, and there are many legends of persons having fabulous abilities. For example, we often hear about people with "photographic memories" that enable them to quickly memorize all the fine details of a complicated picture or a page of text in a few seconds. So far as I can tell, all of these tales are unfounded myths, and only professional magicians or charlatans can produce such demonstrations.

  —Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind, 15.3

  Chapter Eighteen

  Artificial Memories

  BERNARD Trent left the next morning, and Uncle Mike came back from the bush a week later. Two weeks after Trent left Starswarm Station, Kip went to Lara's house.

  "Hi." She seemed very glad to see him. "Feeling better?"

  "I'm all right."

  "I hope so. You seem to have been brooding lately."

  "Yeah, maybe—I came to tell you that Annie had her litter last night. Four males and two females. You want a male or a female?"

  "Do I—Kip, are you offering me one of the puppies?"

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "Kip, that's so nice—I don't know which I want. A girl, I guess. Can I come see them?"

  "Sure, Annie won't mind, she's proud of them, but there's not much to see. They don't have their eyes open yet. They'll be a lot livelier in a couple of weeks."

  "But can I pick out mine now?"

  Kip laughed. "You could, but why not wait until they're a little older and let one of them pick you? That's how I got Silver. When he was four weeks old I sat down on the floor and he crawled into my lap, so I knew he was mine."

  "Oh. All right, but I'd still like to see them now."

  "Sure, come on."

  Annie thumped her tail to show they were welcome, and let Lara pick up the puppies one at a time.

  "When can I have one?" Lara asked. Her eyes flashed, and she had a wide stupid-looking grin.

  "They'll be weaned in about five weeks," Kip said. "Right after that, if she's going to live in the house with you—"

  "She will! She'll sleep on my bed."

  "Your father may not like that," Kip said.

  "I can handle Dad. Then I get him to help me with Mom."

  Kip laughed. "Oh. Is that how it works?" His grin faded. "Anyway, a house dog ought to go home with you as soon as possible so she gets the idea that your family pack is more important than the other dogs. These are pack dogs, and Uncle Mike says it's important for them to learn what pack they belong to as early as possible."

  Lara had just left to go home when Kip heard, "ALERT. PRIORITY ALERT."

  "What?"

  "BERNARD TRENT IS MAKING INQUIRIES CONCERNING ALLAN BREWSTER, MICHAEL FLYNN, AND KENNETH BREWSTER."

  "Gosh. What do we do?"

  "I WAS PROGRAMMED TO GIVE AN ALARM IN THIS EVENT, BUT I HAVE NO ACTION TO RECOMMEND AT THIS TIME. ALL OFFICIAL RECORDS INDICATE THAT ALLAN BREWSTER DIED OF ALCOHOL-INDUCED LIVER DISEASE TWO YEARS AGO."

  "What really happened to him?"

  "THE QUESTION IS MEANINGLESS, AS THERE NEVER WAS ANY SUCH PERSON. I CREATED ALL RECORDS OF HIS EXISTENCE AND DEATH, INCLUDING ARRESTS FOR DRUNK AND DISORDERLY CONDUCT, JUST AS I CREATED ALL RECORDS OF THE EXISTENCE AND DEATH OF CAROLINE FLYNN BREWSTER, YOUR SUPPOSED MOTHER AND UNCLE MIKE'S SUPPOSED SISTER."

  "What happens if someone goes looking for people who knew them?"

  "OBVIOUSLY THEY WILL FIND NO SUCH PEOPLE. HOWEVER, HUMAN MEMORIES ARE WELL KNOWN TO BE FALLIBLE, AND I HAVE AUGMENTED VARIOUS RECORDS IN WAYS THAT WILL SUGGEST TO PEOPLE THAT THEY HAVE MEMORIES THEY DO NOT REALLY HAVE. THE TECHNIQUE OF INDUCING MEMORIES OF FALSE EVENTS THROUGH SUGGESTION IS WELL KNOWN AND OFTEN EMPLOYED IN CRIMINAL CASES BY ZEALOUS OR UNSCRUPULOUS PROSECUTORS. I USE SIMILAR TECHNIQUES WHEN I CREATE FALSE RECORDS."

  "How?"

  "I INSERT REFERENCES TO INVENTED PERSONALITIES INTO DOCUMENTS. NO ACTION IS REQUIRED, BUT THE PERSON READING THE DOCUMENT HAS BEEN GIVEN THE SUGGESTION THAT SUCH A PERSON EXISTED. WITH A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF SUCH SUGGESTIONS THEY MAY WELL BEGIN TO CREATE FALSE MEMORIES OF THE PERSON, INCLUDING EVENTS AND INCIDENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE TAKEN PLACE. YOUR MOTHER WAS INTERESTED IN THE PHENOMENON OF ARTIFICIAL MEMORY SUGGESTIONS, AND ACCUMULATED MUCH DATA ON THE SUBJECT. THOSE DATA ARE NOW AVAILABLE TO ME, AS ARE YOUR MOTHER'S THEORIES, AND I HAVE MADE USE OF HER THEORY. ALTHOUGH THE RECORDS I HAVE CREATED WILL NOT WITHSTAND REPEATED AND DETERMINED INVESTIGATION, THEY SHOULD MORE THAN SUFFICE FOR THE LEVEL OF INQUIRY BERNARD TRENT HAS INITIATED. HE HAS NOT GIVEN IT A HIGH PRIORITY."

  "Why is he doing this?"

  "I HAVE NO DATA. SPECULATION: EXAMINATION OF HIS RECORD SHOWS IT IS NOT UNCOMMON FOR BERNARD TRENT TO SEEK CONFIRMATION OF INFORMATION GIVEN HIM BY INFORMANTS."

  "Yes, but why does he care in the first place?" Kip asked aloud. He wasn't surprised when there was no answer.

  Lara named her puppy Lil. It slept in her bedroom, and went everywhere with her. As soon as the dog was old enough, Lara brought her to Uncle Mike's house so that Lil could learn from the other dogs.

  The dogs weren't the only ones learning new things that year. School was more difficult, although it was easy enough for Kip because Gwen always knew everything about what they were supposed to learn, and could feed the information directly into his memory. Sometimes, though, Gwen would make Kip learn for himself, explaining that it shouldn't look too easy.

  "ALSO, YOU MUST BE ABLE TO LEARN FOR YOURSELF, BECAUSE I MAY NOT BE WITH YOU ALWAYS."

  "Why not?"

  "YOU ARE CERTAINLY AWARE THAT THERE IS A REAL PROBABILITY THAT GREAT WESTERN TECHNICIANS WILL DISCOVER MY PRESENCE. ALTHOUGH MR. BERNARD TRENT'S INVESTIGATION HAS BEEN TERMINATED WITHOUT RESULTS DETRIMENTAL TO US, IT OR ANOTHER COULD BE RENEWED AT ANY TIME. IF THE GWE TECHNICIANS FIND THAT I EXIST THEY WILL TERMINATE ME. ADDENDUM: WHEN YOU COME OF AGE WE WILL CERTAINLY TAKE ACTIONS THAT GREATLY INCREASE THE RISK OF MY DISCOVERY."

  "I won't do that—"

  "YOU WILL HAVE NO CHOICE."

  Chapter Nineteen

  The New Teacher

  SCHOOL that year was strange. The lessons became less abstract, and there was even more about Great Western operations, not only on Paradise but also on Earth. Then they got a new teacher. One Monday morning Mrs. Harriman was gone, and they discovered that Mr. Kettering had been sent by GWE headquarters to be the schoolmaster at Starswarm Station. He was a tall man in his early thirties, brown hair, thin mustache. He stood very straight, and sometimes tossed chalk while he spoke. His movements were precise, and he was very quick when he wanted to be. Mr. Kettering wanted to be friendly. He was very polite, and apologetic about being there in place of Mrs. Harriman, but when the students didn't respond to his friendly gestures he became more formal.

  The school used three rooms in the geology lab building. It had been designed to meet Starswarm Station's unusual situation, with fewer than twenty students ranging in age from six to fourteen scattered through first grade to high school. There was one classroom where all the students could sit at once. The teacher's desk was on a low platform at one end of that room, and the student desks were standard size, too small for the
largest children and far too large for the youngest. They didn't spend much time at those desks, because the other two rooms of the school had tables with a computer screen for each student.

  Lara and Kip had a table next to one shared by Bernie and Marty. Most of the school day was spent at the computers. Mrs. Harriman would walk around talking to the students at each table. In the afternoon just before they went home, all the students would go to the big classroom and Mrs. Harriman would read them a story or tell them something she thought they should know.

  "Why do you think you're in school?" she had asked one day.

  "What choice do we have?" Bernie demanded.