Pallas

by L. Neil Smith

  The last time an estimate had been made, there were fifty thousand people on Pallas, and there were fewer than a hundred in this room, but it was a beginning.

  Everything had a beginning.

  “There’s no storm at the poleports,” he pointed out. “And I’ve learned that there are ample supplies of aluminized mylar to build another solar mirror! All that’s needed is the will to order that mirror built and placed in orbit!”

  Perhaps the White Rose Tattoo was better, since some idiot at the Nimrod would have been sure to point out that putting another mirror in orbit would take time and money as well as will. It would require the skillful operation of a dozen small spacecraft, which were expensive and difficult to run even at the best of times, and it wasn’t strictly true that there was no storm at the poles. There wasn’t any atmosphere, and the storm through which they were suffering—and which would make the undertaking dangerous—consisted of deadly charged particles.

  “We’ll put it to a vote, then act! Suspend the Stein Covenant, take over both TV stations, conscript an army which will overrun any resistance at the poles! By that time, I can have a war fleet on its way from Earth! We’ll force them to put up that other mirror, and if anything needs to be paid for to get it done, by God we’ll enact some tax law and screw it out of rich sons of bitches like Emerson Ngu!”

  Nobody cheered among the huddled masses in the tavern, but nobody argued with him, either. A few eyes, a few faces turned toward him, half in guilty fear, half in dawning hope.

  Everything had a beginning.

  “All in favor, say aye!”

  Spring Eternal

  To know what you know, and to know what you don’t know, is to know.

  —Roger L. Smith

  The night held warmth, moisture, and a promise, unmistakable to anyone who could remember it, although there were children grown on Pallas, with children of their own, who couldn’t.

  Emerson squinted one good eye through bifocals that needed cleaning. Long ago he’d learned the hard way, from the first experience he’d had like this—the ambush in which Gretchen had been killed—never to provide an advantage to the enemy. This time the territory was his—they couldn’t possibly know the ground the way he did—and he didn’t intend to be caught entirely in the dark.

  It seemed a lifetime ago—and it had been—that ugly business with Gretchen and Junior’s goons. He’d been, what, sixteen? He didn’t remember, although it felt like yesterday. For that matter, it had been a full quarter of a century, he realized with a start, since he’d fought his desperate, snowbound battle with a pack of hungry wolves, back in the early years of Pallas’s long solar winter. And he’d thought himself an old man—of fifty-three—even then.

  Now—he looked down. The icy claws of winter had been pried loose of Pallas at long last, although the wounds and scars they’d left behind would be a long while healing. And was this the hand of somebody seventy-eight years old? But the sight of an old, familiar weapon in his hand brought him abruptly back to the present. He was seeing it mostly by memory in any case. Through a high overcast, the reflected light from Rosalie, his artificial mylar moon, was insufficient to lend any real detail, and the wellhead’s electric lamps would stay unlit.

  He needed light for only the merest fraction of a second, something to tell him where the other guy was. What he wanted was a tripwire of some kind, a blasting cap from the toolshed behind him, and a pinch of fine, fast-burning flash powder, the latter unconfined by anything more than the thin layer of transparent plastic wrap required to keep it together. They’d do the trick very neatly.

  Rosalie—his own Rosalie—did the wrapping; he prepared the tripwires and caps. The only plastic they had with them, the kitchen variety that stuck to itself whether you wanted it to or not, had always hated him. Then, in the moonlight, he placed as many of the makeshift devices as they could fabricate, ten or twelve dozen before he lost count, around the little fortress of piled sandbags where they would make their stand. Between the rocks and boulders of this stony region where his pipeline started, the soil bubbled with a thaw a generation overdue.

  They sat together and ate a final meal.

  Hell, he thought, if I’m seventy-eight, it’s a different seventy-eight than anyone ever lived before. He’d spent all but the first two on Pallas, in a tenth the gravity mankind had evolved under. And he was physically capable in a way an Earthman of forty might envy. Even those, like Mrs. Singh, Aloysius—and Altman, unfortunately—who’d spent most of their adult lives on Earth had benefited on the asteroid, and there was no telling how long those born here were likely to live.

  Cherry, who’d returned to Earth and its gravity, had passed away a couple of months ago, although she’d lived a long, eventful life, acquiring LiteLink and other media companies. For thirty years she’d sent him postcards and he’d sent her pictures of the kids. She’d even made a stab at reforming the way news got reported.

  His wife looked up from her sandwich and smiled. He was a lucky man, he reflected, to have loved three beautiful, intelligent women, the one he’d married the most beautiful and intelligent of all. That they’d apparently loved him for some reason, each according to her fashion, was little short of a miracle. And that the beautiful, intelligent creature sitting beside him had bestowed upon him eight beautiful, intelligent children while managing an alien artifacts laboratory at the Ngu Departure plant with a crew that still grew every year was utterly beyond belief.

  In the distance, a bird—he didn’t know what kind—gave uncertain song to the friendly darkness. If he had to die tonight, he could do it knowing he hadn’t missed anything very important. But he’d do his damnedest not to die, not only to help keep his lovely Rosalie alive, not only so that their wonderful mob of kids would have a father, but because there remained so much he wanted to do!

  Twenty-five years: she’d been eight months into a troubled pregnancy filled with blood and hovering terror, the kind no young woman should have to go through. There being no such thing as a free lunch, it was a price they paid for their longevity on Pallas, a not-so-beneficial consequence of lower gravity. It would result in a winnowed, hardier population. But, as had so often been the case in the two million years humanity had already been around, women had to pay the tab.

  Tonight, damp, earthy smells of melting ice and warming soil dominated even the blooming of night flowers. Back then, he’d been feeding animals in the Pocks (not as trivial a pursuit as it might seem), when he’d had a warning through Ned Polleck that Altman was up to his old tricks, this time attempting a straightforward coup against the Covenant under cover of harsh weather, rallying a portion of the populace driven from their homes by the cold, as Altman himself had been. They were desperate enough to listen to him, and he was taking full advantage.

  He’d begun in the White Rose Tattoo, planning to seize the TV stations next door and across the street, proclaim suspension of the Covenant, and yell for help to a fleet he swore already stood about Earth to come to their aid. Democracy would be “restored,” and he promised an extra solar mirror would be constructed to end the unusual weather. What good seizing KCUF and WRCS would have done, Emerson hadn’t figured out yet; their antennas had been blown down in the storm, they were off the air, and Altman didn’t know enough to get them back on again. He’d never learned you can’t order technicians around the way you can stoop labor.

  Meanwhile, Emerson was fighting for his life. He’d fired his last shot, and there were plenty of hungry wolves left, many of which hadn’t shared in feasting on their dead and dying pack-mates but were maddened by the scent of blood.

  The Grizzly would make a lousy club, he thought, as the starving animals shook off timidity and approached slowly, fur bristled, muzzles accordioned into snarls. He groped inside his coat for the survival knife he carried. It had been Gretchen’s, a long, subtly curved weapon with a tanto-cornered tip. That he was a dead man, he knew all too well, but he was determined not to die cheaply. A cus
tomer or two tonight at Emerson’s Diner would get a supper of cold steel.

  He dropped his pistol, bracing against whatever he’d backed into as the first wolf leaped. Holding his knife, edge up, in both hands, he took the shock of the animal’s eighty pounds on his wrists, lifting and gutting it before he thrust it aside.

  Another leaped—then exploded in midair, showering him with hot blood! An instant later came the thunder of a mighty weapon, terrible as the impact of the bullet.

  He didn’t dare turn to his left, where the sound came from. Part of the pack was distracted, but several still paced a half-circle around him, and he must keep watching. Another, closest to him, blew apart, tossed to his right like a doll of rags and sawdust. At the same time he knew he’d had another shower, a literal bloodbath, he heard a second tremendous blast, closer now, and recognized it.

  “Digger!”

  “Coming, boy! Keep your guard up—and an eye on the doggies!”

  “No problem!”

  Another wolf died, and another, and another. Then it was over. As the old man approached on what Emerson recognized were snowshoes, the pack evaporated into the storm they’d come from, leaving behind little but the bones of their dead. They’d even licked up most of the bloody snow around the bodies of their fallen mates.

  He groped at his feet for his gun, brushed away gory slush, and slipped it in an outer pocket, unwilling to reholster it. He found a spare magazine where he’d dropped it and, by the time Drake-Tealy was at his side, wondered what to do with his knife. It was stainless, but he didn’t want to put it back bloody, either.

  “Well, son, I see you almost made it!”

  “Digger, what the hell are you doing way out here?”

  “Way out’s in the eye of the beholder. Don’t you know where you are?”

  He looked suspiciously at the snow-buried clump behind him. “No idea. When I went down, I figured I was fifty miles from Curringer, but I had plenty of reason to be further off than that.” He slipped his feet into snowshoes Digger had brought for him. They were oval, smaller than Digger’s, something he’d be grateful for before he took more than a few steps, snowshoeing being a strenuous art.

  Drake-Tealy laughed. “You’re in Mrs. Singh’s backyard! Miri and I holed up here for the duration. When Nails told us you were headed back, we kept looking. Imagine our surprise when we heard gunfire. I thought you’d come to practice where you first learned!”

  Emerson sighed, realizing that the long day wasn’t over yet. “I could use the practice. I’ve come to kill the Senator, I think. You want to go with me?”

  Drake-Tealy nodded toward the bloody knife clutched in Emerson’s fist. “I had an impression you were out of shells.”

  “I have this—or I can beat him to death with my gun.”

  Digger nodded enthusiastically. “That I’d like to see!”

  With a pang of regret over sandwiches and hot chocolate he was sure Mrs. Singh had waiting for them inside, Emerson turned toward the corrugated shed where she kept her three-wheeled contraption. Their snowshoes got them that far. They dug away the door and discovered that the rear of the roof had collapsed. The machine itself was almost pinned in the shed. It got them to the edge of town a mile away.

  The trip took over an hour.

  It was like a diorama of the end of the world. Snow piled deeply against buildings on both sides of the street had blocked it, forming gently-curved saddle drifts such as he’d landed in between the trees. They abandoned their vehicle, strapped snowshoes on again, and made their difficult, exhausting way toward the Nimrod. Emerson was nearly used up. It was harder and harder to breathe in the intense cold, his chest had hurt since the landing, and the full ferocious weight of a leaping wolf on his knife had strained his arms, which ached.

  Before they came to Brody’s, they saw a scattering of shadows straggling from the blizzard into the White Rose Tattoo and decided between them to see what was going on. They arrived at the door just as Altman was finishing his harangue.

  “...no storm at the poleports, and I’ve learned that there are ample supplies of aluminized mylar to build another solar mirror! All that’s needed is the will to order that mirror built and placed in orbit! We’ll put it to a vote, then act!”

  Standing inside the doorway, Emerson was disappointed to hear murmurs of assent from the crowd. Drake-Tealy, looking like the Abominable Snowman in his ice-encrusted winter gear, gave him a knowing, cynical nod. Emerson shook his head.

  “Suspend the Stein Covenant,” Altman went on, apparently not noticing their presence at the back. He looked like he was enjoying this. “Take over both TV stations, conscript an army which will overrun any resistance at the poles! By that time, I can have a war fleet on its way from Earth! We’ll force them to put up that other mirror, and if anything needs to be paid for to get it done, by God we’ll enact some tax law and screw it out of rich sons of bitches like Emerson Ngu!

  “All in favor, say aye!”

  Suddenly the barroom exploded with the all-enveloping thunder of Digger’s rifle going off into the ceiling, which responded by raining dust onto their heads and shoulders.

  “I vote nay!” the anthropologist shouted, “and so does that rich son of a bitch, Emerson Ngu!”

  Trying to ignore the ringing in his left ear, Emerson stepped forward, his pistol encrusted with frozen wolf blood. He realized that he, too, was covered with it, and that he must have been a horrifying sight to the people huddled in the room.

  “The Stein Covenant is a unanimous consent agreement,” he told them all, “signed by every one of you. It can’t be cast off by majority vote, and I won’t let it be overthrown by a mob!” One-handed, he thumbed the hammer back on his empty automatic and pointed the muzzle at Altman’s face. “I’ll kill you first!”

  Altman took a step backward. “Why, this is...this is unthinkable! You can’t...you can’t...”

  “I can and I will,” Emerson told him. “And I’ll enjoy it!”

  “So will I,” Digger added, leveling his rifle at the Senator. Emerson knew he had just fired the last round his .416 Rigby held in its magazine. Even if he had more in his pockets, the crowd would overrun them if he tried to reload.

  “But I’ll do something else, if you let me,” Emerson added, putting into motion an idea he’d had on the way back from the Pocks. “This is all about an additional solar mirror, right? And, if I know Altman here, it’s about how to get the thing built and paid for by force. All right, I’ll build it. Anyone who wants to help can help pay me for it after it’s built. Otherwise, I’ll foot the bill myself. I’ll start as soon as I get Fritz Marshall on the phone. I think it can be done in a few weeks if you can all hold out that long.”

  “He’s stalling,” Altman warned them. “He hasn’t solved the free-rider problem yet!”

  Emerson laughed. “Yes I have, you idiot!” He lowered his gun and shoved it back in his pocket. He’d have to burn this parka, or it would stink once the blood thawed. “To prevent destruction of the Covenant, I’m willing to gamble everything I have and underwrite the construction myself. To hell with free riders, I want the mirror, not the dubious satisfaction of forcing others to pay for it!”

  Afterward, he’d learned that the entire crowd had turned their backs on Altman and cheered.

  He hadn’t seen them do it.

  His eye had rolled back in his head, and he’d collapsed.

  The Fountainhead

  That government is best which governs someone else.

  —Rex F.May

  He was ready when the first of his flash-flares went off. Silhouetted momentarily in the almost blinding light, the lead attacker was confused because something bright and noisy had just happened behind him, and sought cover too late.

  Emerson’s pistol sights rose and aligned themselves on the frozen target. When something happened in front of the thug—the blast of the Grizzly—he never knew it. A 260-grain softpoint took him square in the center—Emerson thought for an
instant he could see light from the dying flare through a hole gaping in the man’s chest—and the thug pitched over on his face, dead before he hit the ground.

  Emerson’s own short-lived shadow, thrown across the sandbags piled before him and followed by the slap of Rosalie’s Mark IV Ngu Departure, told him that another of Altman’s henchmen had tripped a wire on the other side of their perimeter. Her silence, rather than profanity, meant that she’d connected and that one less assassin would be collecting blood money from the Senator after this night’s work.

  Why Altman had resorted to a strategy of outright sabotage and murder worthy of his long-dead son, now that the solar winter was finally ending, Emerson couldn’t say. He’d never understood why the man did anything. He only knew that these hirelings were here to contaminate the most important single water source on Pallas and that he, himself—thanks to one thug who’d wanted more money and didn’t care whether it came from the intended victim—was here to stop them.

  Two more simpletons fell to a combination of flares and carefully aimed gunfire before it finally occurred to them to fall back and come up with some other plan.

  This wasn’t the first assassination attempt foiled by Emerson’s adeptness at self-defense. Perhaps worse, the barrage of injunctions, restraining orders, lawsuits, and other—what had Aloysius called it, chicanery?—had never let up, even while the rest of the planet had been locked in its arctic nightmare.

  At one point, working through Earthside holding companies, Altman had even tried to ruin Emerson by manipulating the outstanding loans which construction of the solar mirror had made necessary. Without warning, however, small ice-asteroids, propelled by an experimental application of Fritz Marshall’s new fusion/ion drive, had begun arriving at both polar spaceports. It was the payoff on an old investment which, during the emergency, Emerson had almost forgotten. Meant to utilize his already existing pipeline network, it had bailed him out, saving him from Altman’s machinations.