I asked the question that had troubled me since we landed. ‘Why have we stopped here? This isn’t where we’re going, is it?’
Gwen shook her head, and her dark hair shimmered in the late morning sun. ‘No, it isn’t. But there was a change of plan. We have an unauthorised passenger, and a new recruit who won’t go without him. So we have to wait.’
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘Not what.’ Now she stood up, and looked back towards the flyer nestled close to the rock face, with the camouflage net thrown over it. ‘Who. We have to wait for Dr Hendriks to arrive.’
PART TWO
REPUBLIC
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master.
Abraham Lincoln
‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel:
Let my people go, that they may
celebrate a feast to me in the desert.’
Exodus 5:1
14
FOR THE TELLING . . .
(Extracts from the works of RJ Tolhurst transcribed to Archive Disk with the author’s permission: 12/14/165 Standard)
From: Memoirs of a Teenage Revolutionary (Chapter One)
The year 101 was always intended to be a turning point in the history of the human settlement on Deucalion. It was the year of the inaugural elections, when for the first time the power was supposed to shift from the Earth-controlled Ruling Council to a President and an independent Congress.
In a busy and productive century since the arrival of the first C-ship, the human population of the planet had grown from the original thirty thousand to something approaching thirteen million, spread out in a few oversized cities, and a large number of small mining communities and agri-centres. Almost all of these could be found in the narrow, habitable strip of coastal land which stretched down the eastern coastline of Deucalion’s single huge continent, and on the Fringes of the Great Central Desert.
Of course, not all these people had their origins on Old Earth. Three generations of ‘Deucs’ had swelled the population by at least as much as the two or three C-ships that arrived in orbit over New Geneva each year. ‘Native Born Deucalions’ was the official terminology – which, typically, totally ignored the fact that there was already a race of ‘native’ Deucalions in existence well before the human race found its way down out of the trees. It was the very nature of this population which created such problems for the World Government back on the mother-planet.
Deucalion was a pioneer society, which is to say that the people expected life to be pretty hard. Of course, there were exceptions: members of the Ruling Council, executives of the Deucalion Mining Corporation, and a few wealthy immigrants, whose reasons for making the one-way trip were shrouded in rumour and speculation. But, in general, the people were drawn from the ‘working classes’ of Earth’s economically segregated society.
Planetary colonisation was seen as a way of ridding the community of a number of major problems, with the added bonus that the new colony would provide access to the untapped mineral reserves of an entire world, just at a time when over-consumption had bled the old world dry. It was expensive, but it was cheaper than fighting interminable wars over ever-diminishing resources.
It is ironic that, in the end, war on Earth was ended, not by the international peace movements that had marched and protested – and even assassinated – in the name of world peace since the end of the twentieth century; nor by the ‘Balance of Terror’ or the final dominance of one martial power, but by DiBortelli’s discovery of the warp. It was no ‘swelling of public opinion worldwide’ – even though that was how the World Government portrayed it in its Charter. The end of war, like its cause, was ultimately purely economic.
The profits which were there to be made through the use of warp technology from the exploitation of Deucalion’s (and other planets’) untapped resources were even greater than those to be made from weapons and warfare. As a result, almost overnight the rivalries dried up and new, cooperative ventures were born – not between countries, but between those individuals and corporations who had the wealth to bankroll the exploration.
A great idea. If you can keep control of the colony you are exploiting. The problem was that no one took too much notice of history.
My grandfather was a historian. He wrote ten or eleven books on Deucalion, which were included on the Universal Database. He lived here and he loved the place – and the people. All the people, human and Elokoi. I remember as a child listening to him as he spoke to my father.
‘People don’t read history any more,’ he said. And he was right. Then he asked, ‘How can they hope to work out what is going to happen, if they don’t know how to read the signs?’
I was too young to understand his words at the time, but they came back to haunt me during the events that followed the ‘phony’ elections of 101 . . .
Roosevelt Ranges
Edison Sector (South)
15/11/101 Standard
SAANI
Saani, the old Teller, stood in the entrance to the living-cave and watched the approach of the two young Elokoi. They were coming, as she had known they would, following the Dream, obeying the call of the haaj, as she herself had done so many years before.
Four mooncycles she had waited for them, and watched the mountain paths for their approach, seeking in her failing memory for the songs that she had learned so many years ago. The young one was quick. She would learn the colours of a song and sing it back, and it would live within her for the Telling. And when the learning was complete, and all the Dreams and all the songs and all the stories were passed safely on, only then would Saani rest. Then she would close her eyes, and let the Worldsong sing its colours to her soul, and carry her away. Beyond.
A Change was coming. But Saani the Teller, for all that she had clung to life so long, knew that she would not live long enough to see it. And yet, she sensed . . . a certain symmetry. Beginning and end. Life and death. A journey forward to the future, backward to the source. Another turning of the Circle. The Worldsong called its colours to her like half-remembered echoes, but she pushed them back. Not yet . . . Just one more moonlife, for the Telling.
The child was young, hardly more than a cub, but she had the Dream. She was the one. Again, Saani looked down at the two young journeyers as they climbed.
They were close now. Saani moved out into the glare of the morning sun, and touched her face in the sign of greeting. Then, turning, she led them inside . . .
15
TAGGING THE HOPPER
Elokoi Reserve, Wieta Clan
Edison Sector (East Central)
15/11/101 Standard
JANE
‘I thought you might like to know, you’ve moved again.’ Denny walked into the hut without knocking, and I jumped. He caught me every time.
‘You’ve got to stop doing that!’ I was trying to sound angry, but it wasn’t any use. There was no way I could ever be angry with him. Besides, I’d been with the Elokoi for about four months by that stage, so I’d almost forgotten how to get angry. But even if I hadn’t, I couldn’t imagine shouting at Denny and really meaning it. I gave up. ‘Where did I move to, this time?’
He smiled. ‘Roma. I took the shuttle up from New G the night before last, and used your mini-comm to call Hendriks’ comm at the Facility. There was no answer, of course, but I heard the tracer cut in. I didn’t break the connection for maybe ten seconds, so they had plenty of time to work out where you were calling from.’
I moved across the room and kissed him. ‘You’ve got to stop taking chances. Six moves in four months. You’ve got them looking all over for me—’
‘Everywhere except Edison. And here.’ He reached up and brushed my hair away from my eyes. ‘As long as I keep leaving clues and moving you around from place to place, you’re safe. If I stop, they might think you’ve come back, and start looking aro
und here.’
‘But sooner or later they’re going to catch you. Every time you go somewhere, you provide them with another clue. They have computers that can make the connection, you know. Travel records, cred receipts—’
‘I know. I work for Security, remember?’ He sat down on Leani’s bed-platform – a thing that only Denny could get away with. ‘But I never use real ID. One great thing about Security is the class of people you meet. Look.’
He reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a small card-file, from which he selected a cred access-card. He handed it to me and waited. It looked genuine. It even had his face on it, and his thumbprint, digitally encoded. But the name on it was . . . Hans Albrecht.
‘Forgery.’ He sounded proud of himself. ‘But you’d never pick it.’
‘But what about the “print”?’ I asked. ‘As soon as you try to use a scanner on the card, it’ll match the thumbprint with your real record, and they’ll know it’s you.’
Again he smiled. ‘Only if I forget to use this.’ From a secret compartment in the back of the thin card-file, he withdrew a tiny piece of flexible plastic film and pressed it onto his thumb. The plastic moulded invisibly to his skin. He held it up for my inspection. Even though I had seen him put it on, I couldn’t detect it.
‘New thumbprint. And it’s linked to a whole file-identity on the Security computer. Birthday, ID number, blood type, DNA profile, the lot.’ He looked up at me, and I sat down next to him. ‘As far as anyone in Security knew, I never left my room all the time Mr Hans Albrecht was taking the one-day guided tour of Roma.’ He paused for a moment and took hold of my hand. ‘How are you holding up?’
I looked at him and attempted a smile. ‘Not bad. In a way, the last few months have been the best thing for me. Being here, having to stay out of sight, gives me a lot of time to think. I don’t remember anything about what I was like before, but the few things I found out, I didn’t like. Do you know what scares me the most?’
He shook his head.
‘It’s wondering . . . If I hadn’t developed Nixon’s, if I hadn’t forgotten everything, would I be hiding out here at all?’
He looked puzzled, so I pressed on. ‘I mean, maybe what I found wouldn’t have shocked me. Maybe I would have actually tried to follow through on it. See where it led me. What if I was someone who was capable of approving of something like Icarus?’
He still had hold of my hand, and I felt him squeeze it gently. ‘I don’t know what kind of person you were, and I don’t care. It’s like you said once, that person is dead. The person you are is the product of what you know and feel and believe – and remember – right now. That’s the only person I know.’ He hesitated slightly before continuing, ‘That’s the person I love.’
He’d never said it before, and it was a moment before the words registered. I guess I’d known it for a while, but that’s not the same as hearing it directly. I didn’t know what to say. It’s one thing to sit and think about it when you’re alone. And I had thought about it. But faced with the fact, I couldn’t bring to mind any of the replies I’d imagined making when the day finally arrived.
‘You do?’ I managed to force the words out, and suddenly I found myself smiling.
‘I do,’ he replied, looking directly into my eyes. A look that required a response.
‘Me too,’ I managed, before Rael came in through the door and saved me from the embarrassment of crying like a baby.
‘Daenny!’ He made a half-hearted attempt to act surprised, though we both knew he’d known of Denny’s arrival well before I had. Nothing escaped Rael’s attention. Except how to pronounce offworlder names. ‘Saliba, my truefriend. We were not . . . excepting you.’
‘Saliba, Rael—’ Denny began, but I cut in.
‘That’s “expecting”, Rael.’
‘Excepecting . . .’ He experimented with the alien syllables, and gave the Elokoi equivalent of a shrug. ‘Too many sounds. Too damn . . . primitive.’
I smiled at Denny. The old fox was having his usual joke. During my four-month stay, Rael had taught me virtually all the Elokoi speechwords, and I was well on the way to mastering their complex grammar. In return, I was trying to tune up Rael’s appalling use of Standard. I definitely had the harder job.
Elokoi wordspeech is really quite simple once you get over the fact that there are more grammatical rules than there are words. Most of their communication is mind to mind, so their words are pretty inefficient. I sometimes wondered why they developed wordspeech at all. Unless the telepathy came later. I asked Rael once, but he simply looked at me.
‘Just is. Offworlder ask too many question. Is just . . . is. Why ask why? Knowing why going to stop is?’
That was one of the many times I just gave up and shook my head. In the end, it was far easier for me to learn such a limited language than it was for Rael to master what is probably the most complicated one, even if he did make a joke of it.
I put on my stern look. ‘And don’t say “damn”. You’re quick enough picking up the cuss-words.’
He scratched behind his ear with a long finger and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Damn right,’ he said.
16/11/101
DENNY
When the ether-link finally came to life, they were both sound asleep, and with the mini-comm sitting somewhere at the bottom of Denny’s backpack, there was little chance of either of them hearing the muffled electronic bleep. In the first weeks after he’d installed the link, he had carried it almost everywhere, and slept with it on the desk beside his bed, or on the floor next to him when he spent the night with Leani’s family. But as the months had passed, and the link had stayed silent, it sometimes slipped his mind.
It was Kieta who roused them. The young Elokoi was asleep, but her acute hearing picked up the faint sound, which was strange enough to rouse her. Moments later Denny was awake and so was Jane.
‘What is it?’ The question was addressed to Denny, who held the mini-comm close to his ear. It was an audio link-up so the screen was dead.
‘Jackpot time.’ He was whispering, as if the other people in the loop might hear if he spoke too loudly. There was no thought of trying to allow Leani’s family to sleep. As soon as Kieta had awoken, so had the rest. They lay quietly on their bed-platforms, obeying the rules of Elokoi etiquette, waiting to be informed. The Elokoi asked very few questions.
‘Quick,’ he said suddenly, ‘write this down.’
Jane found a pen, but with nothing to write on, she used the back of her hand. It was an address, a location actually. And a time. Nine fifty, half an hour to midnight.
‘They’re talking about . . . another “pick-up”. And something about Gaston’s goons and “a sting”.’
Suddenly the link went dead. Denny placed it carefully on the floor.
‘What does it mean?’ Jane was watching the wheels begin to turn behind Denny’s eyes as he planned. ‘Denny, what’s going on? I don’t think I like that look.’
He turned his attention to her and smiled. ‘It means we’ve got to get moving. We’re going to tag them.’ He stood up, walked across to the doorway and looked out at the night sky, before turning back into the room. ‘Do you feel up to an expedition into the lion’s den?’
Jane looked up at him questioningly. He continued: ‘You see, it’s much safer if two of us try. And you’re the only one I can trust . . . apart from our friends here, and they would tend to be a touch . . . conspicuous.’
For a moment, Jane continued to look at him. Then she stood and moved towards him. ‘If you thought I was ever going to let you go on your own, you’ve got boulders in your head.’ She paused for a moment, then took hold of his hand. ‘I’ve hidden away long enough. From now on, we fight back.’
Denny stepped back a pace and smiled. ‘My girl, the radical. I’ve got a present for you. I had a friend in Roma make it up
for me while I was there.’
Moving across to his backpack, he rummaged around for a few moments, then drew out another small card-file. Opening it, he produced an ID similar to the one he had shown her earlier. Except that when she looked at this one, she was surprised to see a holo of her own face looking back. She looked at the name, and gave a small laugh. Jane Leani.
‘I figured that seeing as you needed a new family name, what was wrong with the family you already had?’ Then, to stop the tears that he saw beginning in her eyes, he slid open the secret compartment at the back of the file. ‘Here, you’ll need this too. Wear it whenever you carry the card. You can never tell when you’ll be asked for ID, and you don’t want to have to fiddle around putting it on. It tends to look a little obvious.’
Wiping her eyes, Jane applied the bogus thumbprint. Denny continued: ‘We hacked into the Security mainframe and opened a file for you. Oh, and we “borrowed” a hundred thousand creds from the Facility’s Research budget account. Consider it a “termination payment”. You have retired, haven’t you?’
‘Denny, you’re a crook. And you never told me.’
He shook his head. ‘Never done it before. Besides, they won’t miss it. We rigged the transfer so that if they do an audit, the money’s still there. It’s not really money at all. It’s just a few bytes of information on a computer file. It doesn’t affect the economy and no one’s going to starve because of it. Least of all you. How do you think the hackers pay for all their hi-tech equipment? They’ve been at it for centuries and no one’s ever been able to stop them. Besides, they have a couple of unwritten rules: Never create more credit than you absolutely need, and never mess around with the account of anyone who’ll notice. So for the authorities, it’s never been worth the expense of trying to catch them. It’s a sort of unofficial compromise.’
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