Withûr We

by Matthew Bruce Alexander

  Chapter 89

  When Gregory, Alistair and Layla went to visit Henry Miller, he was prepared to receive them because Gregory called ahead of time. They found him in a ground floor studio in the eastern part of the city on a wide and well-trafficked boulevard. He had drinks ready when they walked through the door, and he greeted them with an embrace and a genuinely jubilant smile.

  The studio was littered with the kinds of supplies one needs for a political campaign. There were posters in stacks, some of them blank, some of them printed with anti-war slogans and pictures. Signs affixed to stakes, ready for planting in the ground, were scattered everywhere. Two computer stations in the back corners were like islands of tidiness in a sea of disorder, and in between them was another machine used for printing and laminating. It was difficult to say when the place was last cleaned; anything not covered in dust simply hadn’t been there long.

  At the right side of the studio, by the brick wall, was a couch, a coffee table and a few chairs on a rug that wanted sweeping. Already there, waiting on the couch, was a young boy of no more than two cycles whom Henry introduced as his son Jeremiah. The three guests greeted Jeremiah in unison and the toddler, after staring at them for a moment, turned his face into the couch cushions.

  “My wife and I work full time here,” Henry explained as he swept his arm across the scene. “We found some patrons who give us enough to keep us up and running. Some people drop by now and then to volunteer.” He nodded his head as if, upon rechecking the operation, he was still satisfied with it. “I’m not going to get rich this way, but…”

  “You might wind up saving some lives,” Gregory finished.

  “Let’s hope.”

  They sat down, and while Gregory introduced Layla and gave a brief account of their incarceration and escape, Alistair ran his gaze over the room of his formerly politically apathetic friend. He caught Jeremiah peeping at him with one eye, but when he looked at him he buried his face back in the couch cushions.

  “How did those cotton seeds work out?”

  “They helped finance our trip back.”

  “So it was worth it. Oh! By the way!” Henry popped out of his seat, rummaged around in a pile of odds and ends, and came back with a small box filled with index cards. “Greg, your sister is in New Kensington,” he informed the doctor as he flipped through the cards. Finding the one he was looking for, he handed it to Greg.

  Gregory took a look at the card.

  “She moved a couple months ago. Her law firm closed down but she found a new job. She’s doing background investigations.”

  “Interesting.”

  “It’s particularly hard right now, with so many records destroyed. There’s a lot of lawyers looking for other work at the moment.”

  “So I’ve heard,” said Alistair.

  “When Oliver revamped the legal code…” Henry shook his head and gave a low whistle. “He won’t do anything like that again. Cost him way too much. I guess you do what you can. Make the reforms you can make.”

  A moment of quiet passed. Jeremiah moved from his hiding spot to sit in his dad’s lap. From there he watched the visitors out of the corner of his eye, always quick to look away. Henry gave his son a kiss on the head.

  “Stephanie’s working for Oliver,” said Alistair.

  “Yes,” Henry confirmed. “She was in jail after the coup, but Oliver needed people to run the infrastructure.” His visage grew somber. “Alistair, did you hear about your parents?”

  Alistair nodded, color touching his cheeks.

  “Did Gerald tell you how it happened?”

  “I was shown their bodies before I left.”

  “Oh.” He effected a sympathetic expression. “So you know the real story?” In response to Alistair’s nod, he continued. “I just brought it up because Stephanie reminded me – when you mentioned Stephanie – her boss was the one who ordered your parents’ execution.” He flipped through a few more index cards and finally plucked one from the box. “Captain James Montague Travis.”

  Henry handed the card to Alistair. It had a picture of Captain Travis, whom he immediately recognized, and a small written portion detailing background information. The last line listed the date of his execution.

  “Oliver made it one of his primary tasks when he took power. He found Travis, tried him, and had him shot the day after the trial.”

  Alistair felt no sympathy for the dead man, but nonetheless the circumstances of the death gave him a chill in his stomach just as strong as the grim satisfaction he got from knowing the would-be tyrant had been punished.

  “What about Elizabeth and Jack?” asked Gregory.

  Henry’s face was grim again. “Elizabeth is in prison. She left Arcarius and married one of the government’s rich industrialists in Avon. He was active in the fight to squash the rebellion. When Oliver took over, he was convicted and executed. Elizabeth was convicted as an accomplice.”

  There was no mistaking the appalled disapproval on Gregory’s face. “How long is she in for?”

  “Life.”

  Like deflating balloons, Gregory and Alistair sank in their seats. Layla, who knew Elizabeth by reputation, hung her head in sympathy.

  “Jesus Christ, Oliver,” Gregory half whispered.

  “It’s not a subject I would bring up around him, if I were you. I tried it once.”

  “What about Jack?” asked Alistair.

  “No one knows. He disappeared. Probably he… died during the fighting. No one’s heard from him since soon after you left.”

  “What a huge, terrible mess,” lamented Gregory, and Layla, sitting next to him, hugged him close.

  “To fallen comrades,” said Alistair, raising his glass. “Dead and imprisoned.”

  “To fallen comrades,” they repeated and took a drink.

  No sooner had they set their drinks down than the front door burst open and a young man of about seventeen or eighteen cycles rushed in. His face carried an expression fit for some calamity and his breathing suggested a long sprint to reach Henry’s studio.

  “You haven’t gotten the news?” he asked in disbelief.

  Henry, setting his protesting son to the side and standing up, shook his head. The young man rushed to one of the computers, turned on the 3D display, and found a news station on the Comlat. The other four moved to watch. The newscaster, an older man sitting straight and looking suitably dour, was behind a desk giving the news. Sitting next to him was a high ranking officer from the armed forces, a younger man – most of the older generals were either in prison or a mausoleum – but just as dour and gruffer looking than the newscaster.

  “— just reaching us now. With me today is General Bancroft of the Third Division. General, this has come as a shock to the rest of us. Was the government as caught-off-guard as we were?”

  “We were prepared for some bad news. Obviously the size of the disaster we were unprepared for, but we had developed some Overlay communications and were in the initial stages of sending signals. When they went silent on the other end and never got back up, we knew something had transpired. What exactly we are just finding out now.”

  “There are some who feel this is the work of more resistance members.”

  “I think this is quite beyond the capabilities of any resistance.”

  “But the Kaldisian sun was a young star. Do we have any idea what went wrong?”

  “That’s not something I want to speculate on at the current time.”

  “How many Aldrans were lost?”

  “I don’t have the exact numbers.”

  “Do you have an idea?”

  “It’s not something I want to speculate on at the current time.”

  “But it was a sizable amount.”

  “… We had a sizable garrison in a couple cities. A few ships in orbit.”

  “Is everything… everything lost?”

  “We have very few facts at the moment. A supply ship was headed for Kaldis and got hit by a shock wave. They turned o
ff their HD Drive and decelerated… they were less than a light year from Kaldis… and they couldn’t detect the sun. They did a sweep around where the sun ought to have been and found two other ships drifting in space. Farther in, they found no ships, no planets and no sun.”

  “So the star did explode?”

  “That’s the interpretation at this current time right now. It explains the shock wave and the absence of any detectable star.”

  “Could it have been something else?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know how much it matters at this point. Either way, Kaldis will not be habitable. If the star exploded then it was a quick death for billions. If it was something else… we’ll find out if there are any refugees. Frankly, some of them would have beaten the supply ship back home, so I don’t expect we’ll get any.”

  “General, Professor Horace Templeton is the J.P. Whitworth Chair of Astronomy at the Science Institute. According to him, Kaldis was supposed to be a main sequence G-type star for another seven to eight billion years. It was young, still burning hydrogen… no indication of anything wrong—”

  “Well, Jerry, this is a little outside my field of expertise—”

  “But, General, Kaldis was experiencing the same kind of troubles with resistance we are. In fact, according to reports, the attacks were more frequent there and bore all the signs of Overlay technology.”

  “Again, Jerry, the current estimation is that the resistance does not have the capability to destroy a sun. Neither do we. It’s really not something I want to speculate on at the current time.”

  ***

  Katherine and Alistair made it to the Civil Palace and Katherine’s I.D. got them inside, but not far. Once there, she made a call on an intercom, and little by little got her call transferred higher and higher up the ladder until a Civil Guardsman came to escort them to the top level of the Palace. They were taken to an area neither had seen before and admitted to what looked like a large study. The right hand side was taken up by bookshelves reaching fifteen feet to the ceiling and were nearly overflowing with tomes and parchments. Twenty men and women were occupied with work at computers, or among the bookshelves, or were speaking with Oliver.

  Oliver, sitting in a chair at the left hand wall, greeted them with a nod of his head, keeping half his attention on the woman speaking to him. Katherine tentative and Alistair in a melancholy stupor, they crossed the floor, waiting for her to finish. When she did, they edged closer. For a moment, Oliver gave them his full attention and they saw the hallmarks of a night without sleep etched on his face.

  “Good evening,” he greeted and seemed on the point of saying something more but was interrupted by another who came jogging from a computer desk.

  Alistair and Katherine hung back and allowed the conversation to proceed. Oliver got out of the chair, his every movement and expression exuding a regal authority. He followed the man to his computer station, studied the 3D display for a moment, issued an order and returned to his chair. He landed in it with a sigh and rubbed his temples.

  “There are days when I wouldn’t wish this job on anyone.”

  “Difficult decisions to make?” asked Katherine.

  “You could say that.”

  “Well, there’s one decision that just became a lot easier.” She paused, as if giving him time to guess. “It’s time to send out a vessel to investigate whatever was sending those signals.”

  He did not react, save to drop his left hand to his jaw and hold his head with it.

  “When was the last time we confirmed its location?” she asked.

  “You think it was responsible for Kaldis?”

  “I don’t know. I do know there is no known reason why that star exploded.”

  “If it destroyed a sun why do you want to go anywhere near it?” he asked, patiently suffering their intrusions into policy, indulging them a foray into an area where they did not belong.

  “Oliver, I don’t know what it did or what it will do. It’s been sitting at the edge of civilization for several cycles now. Why it would wait to attack, I don’t know. I don’t know whether or not it did anything. I don’t know how it will react to us… I don’t know what it is.” She moved closer to Oliver. “I only know the two most populous planets in the galaxy have been wiped out. It’s a good bet Overlay technology has something to do with the second. This seems pretty important right now.”

  Oliver stared as if trying to penetrate the floor with his gaze. One of his ministers came to stand next to him, an uncertain expression on his face when he looked at Oliver, a cold and unwelcoming one when he looked at the two Ashley’s.

  “Like you said, Katherine, a whole hell of a lot of things have to be done. More than we have the capacity to do. One of the oceanic humidifiers broke down and we are trying to scrape together the men and parts to fix it.”

  “The other humidifiers can compensate.”

  “For a while,” responded the minister in a flat tone, “but they’ll wear out sooner. None of the humidifiers is in excellent shape.”

  “Neither are the cosmic ray generators,” said Oliver. “The whole damn system…” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, looking stressed. “Alistair,” he said when his composure reasserted itself, “I’m surprised you are begging for a government hand out.”

  Alistair blinked once, as if coming out of a reverie. With sluggish lips he whispered, “I haven’t said a word.”

  “But you’re here.”

  He pursed his lips and then forced a little more volume into his speech. “Like it or not, the government has the tools. It’s got the ships, it’s got the scientific equipment, it’s got the money. I’m not going to stay behind and let a tsunami drown me just because government owns the rescue ship. We need to make some sort of contact with this thing.”

  “And if it attacks your ship?”

  “Then we’ll end up like Mar Profundo.”

  Katherine squatted down so her head was at the same level as the President’s. “Oliver, the ramifications of Overlay technology have been greater than we expected. There’s a lepton not participating in the strong interaction. There are multiple bosons occupying the same quantum state, right now as we speak. We’ve found hadrons composed of two up quarks and a down quark, with masses almost two thousand times greater than the lepton… and yet that lepton can still annihilate a positron.” Her voice as serious as her expression, she leaned in to emphasize her point. “God forbid it should ever acquire a fractional angular momentum. Oliver, you have to let us go out there.”

  Jargon sufficiently technical is indistinguishable from babble. She spoke with the quiet calm of authority, with reasoning invincible. Oliver and his minister looked, for all the world, as if they were giving due consideration to her argument. If there was something he did not understand, the leader of all Aldra gave no hint. His concession took the form of a movement of his free hand, resting on his knee, a mere lifting of that hand so the index finger could point to the ceiling. A moment he held the finger up, his forearm still resting on his thigh, and then it dropped back down.

  The minister understood the signal. He nodded once and addressed Katherine.

  “We will be in contact with you when the details are determined and the voyage arranged. If you’ll please step this way.”

  He held out his left hand to indicate the door, and his right to indicate them. Without protest, the Ashley’s allowed themselves to be ushered to the exit, Alistair giving his sister a quizzical look and Katherine sporting an unreadable expression. With a brief smile, nothing more than polite, the minister closed the door, leaving them alone in the still and quiet hall.

  Chapter 90

  For the third time in his life, Alistair left Aldra. The first time he knew he might not return, but if he survived he would see his home again. The second time he thought never to see it again no matter how long he survived. This time he left with such ignorance that any expectations were pointless.

  The ship Oliver provided for them was a sci
ence vessel with some limited defense capabilities. It could comfortably carry a hundred passengers and had two smaller craft docked inside. When the nature of the mission was revealed to the crew, their irritation at being interrupted evaporated, to be replaced by a full realization of the charge given to them and a grim determination to see it through.

  The Captain of the ship, recently renamed The Spirit of the Revolution, was the head of a crew of seventeen. Under his command were three pilots, two cooks, a communications officer, a navigator, a medical officer, two nurses, three engineers and three mechanics. In addition, Oliver gave them a squad of ten marines – a sergeant, a corporal and eight privates – placed under Alistair’s command. Katherine was made head of a scientific team of five, one of whom included Louise Downing, who was stunned to see Alistair. Oliver inquired as to whether Gregory wanted to serve as a medical officer, but at the same time that Katherine was pleading her case to the big rugby star, Gregory and Layla were riding a train to the west coast, there to board a boat for New Kensington’s archipelago. All told, thirty three individuals were on board when The Spirit left its launching pad.

  When Alistair met his squad of marines, it was plain to him the sergeant was neither impressed with him, with wavy locks longer than what was deemed militarily appropriate, nor especially thrilled about being his subordinate. Upon being introduced, the sergeant saluted with a skeptical frown garnished by a furrowed brow, and then presented to Alistair the men who would be under his command. Under the studious gaze of the sergeant, he ordered the men at ease, looked them up and down once, and without a speech quietly sent them on their way. He may not yet have won the sergeant’s respect, but his unassuming manner at least neutralized a portion of his animosity.

  The Spirit’s crew knew their assigned locations for takeoff; the marines and the science team gathered in the small meeting hall and strapped themselves in. They had little sense of movement there, just an overwhelming thrust like an invisible force trying to flatten them. After a time, the ship reduced its acceleration, and Katherine quickly unstrapped herself, hopped out of her chair and ran out the door towards the cafeteria. Alistair strolled after and found her with her face pressed against one of the many large windows of the dining hall, craning her neck to watch as Aldra grew smaller.