“Well, Pinter was known for being the proud sort.”
“Indeed, he was...”
Another few seconds passed before either man spoke again. Emile decided that it would be him, and he decided to move them directly to real purpose of their meeting.
“I imagine you didn’t call this meeting just so you could offer your condolences, Councilor. So why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”
“It’s not what’s on my mind, Doctor. It’s what is on everyone’s mind right now. The entire Solar System appears to be consumed by it, and I wanted to hear your thoughts.”
Emile nodded. As tired as he was with addressing questions about the Manifesto’s release, he did his best not to appear annoyed. The fact that he had prepared remarks for this also worked in his favor.
“My... thoughts are a matter of public record, Councilor. What makes you think I would have anything more to say on that?”
Fionn put his hands behind his back and took a few steps towards the other side of the room. Once there, he stood next to a life-size model of Zubrin, which stood among a series of caricatures honoring the “Red Visionaries.” Fionn looked it over briefly and turned back to Emile.
“What I’m about to say is somewhat sensitive, Doctor. So, when I tell you this, I want you to understand precisely what I’m doing by sharing it.” He stopped and turned to look Emile directly in the eye. With a single command, he voked to the Doctor’s comlink, conveying it all wordlessly. It took mere seconds for the information to reach Emile in orbit, for him to process it and dispatch a reply.
[A Council meeting?] Emile said, feeling the slightest bit shaken. [Is one necessary? I was under the impression this is merely a local matter.]
[It has the potential of becoming more, Doctor. As such, the Solar Council needs to discuss possible contingencies and counter-measures. Which is why I need you to tell me everything there is to know about this matter.]
[I assure you, there’s nothing more to share. The accusations are nothing more than salacious falsehoods. There has never been any plan on behalf of myself or my people to steal any of the Outer Worlds. That’s preposterous!]
[And what of the claims about your colleague, Doctor Lee? For these accusations to have been made not long after he was abducted....] Fionn paused again, letting the insinuation hang in the air. Emile had read the Manifesto, was well aware of the rather detailed claims it made. He also knew why Fionn would make a point of raising Doctor Lee’s abduction. [Have you considered the possibility they can make good on their threat?]
Emile frowned, despite himself. [What are you implying, Councilor? That the accusations are true?]
Fionn smiled. [No, Doctor. I simply have unresolved questions, as do other members of the Council. They would like to know why this manifesto was released so shortly after an incident that left us all so very puzzled. An incident that involved several of your people.]
Emile took a deep breath. He hadn’t expected the Councilor to be quite this direct in his approach, but he wasn’t feeling cornered quite yet. As always, he stuck to his story, repeating it for the Councilor’s benefit.
[We’ve been up front about that. Ward was an incarcerated detective we recruited to investigate Doctor Lee’s disappearance. The nature of Amaru’s involvement with the Cronian cell is still being looked into, but at the moment, it looks like she collaborated with them to kidnap Lee as some sort of political statement. It’s possible they wanted to ransom him and his death, was accidental. But that’s still being looked into. As for the rest, we can only assume Amaru turned Mr. Ward to her side as well, convinced him to go along with their scheme.]
[And how might she have done that?]
Emile shrugged. [She was quite persuasive. She convinced Lee to lower his guard, after all, and he was a very guarded man.]
Fionn nodded. [And the firefight which left dozens of extremist’s dead, the one that apparently involved some unknown assailants... what was their involvement in that aspect of things?]
[I honestly have no idea, Councilor. We’re liaising with the Cronian authorities to try and learn more. We’re getting updates from their Gendarmerie regularly and will of course be sharing the results.]
Fionn crossed his arms. He looked like he wanted to hurl some nasty accusations at Emile. But so far, Emile had offered nothing that could be called implausible, and Fionn knew that any outright denunciations would only lead Emile to cut their meeting short. There wasn’t much more that the Councilor could say at this point, and he clearly knew it.
[Very well,] Fionn replied. [In the meantime, I trust you won’t be sending any more ‘private investigators’ to look into the matter?]
[I will not. I think we’ve established they’re not very useful.]
[I hope for your sake this all blows over. It would be a shame if the accusations proved to have any merit.]
Emile suppressed the urge to say something nasty himself and maintained his smile. [There is absolutely no proof of what they say. And I’m confident the people who released this are the same ones who were responsible for my colleague’s murder. They failed to blackmail us with Lee’s capture, so they’re attempting to damage our reputation with lies instead.]
Emile knew that the counter-accusation sounded paranoid, but such was the role he had to play. If he truly did want to deflect any suspicion from himself, he needed to appear like the victim. After all, a colleague of his had been murdered, one of his own had turned against him, and now his family’s name was being dragged through the mud. All at a time when they were grieving the loss of one of their own.
Eventually, Fionn appeared to accept this and moved on.
“Speaking of Doctor Lee,” he said, switching back to vocal, “how is he doing?”
Emile replied in kind. “He’s fine. Naturally, there was some degree of disorientation when he awakened. But he’s adjusting and getting along well.”
Disorientation was an accurate description of what the new Lee was experiencing. Without the original’s neural patterns to update his memory, the facsimile had woken up to a reality which was, by their reckoning, a few years out of date. What was worse was the fact that he had to be made aware of certain uncomfortable realities, not the least of which was that Amaru had been responsible for his abduction and death. For the newly-awakened Lee, knowing that his colleague had betrayed him had come as no small shock.
Still, all that made Lee what he was, prior to his final trip to the Outer Worlds, was there. Fionn could sympathize with that, at least.
“I imagine it would be confusing to wake up and learn that you had been murdered,” he said. “How are his wife and son?”
“Also adjusting,” Emile said, lowering his voice somewhat. Unlike Lee, they didn’t need to be informed of Amaru’s role in the incident. “They’re simply happy to have him back.”
Fionn placed his hands out, palms up. “Well, please send my best wishes to him. It’s good to know we didn’t lose two prominent citizens to all this craziness.”
“Please do the same for me to the Solar Council,” Emile replied. “And feel free to tell them all that I’ve told you. We have nothing to hide and I’m confident this will all blow over.”
“Let’s hope so,” Fionn said.
The Councilor and the museum disappeared, replaced by the more familiar surroundings of Sarak Lovelock. He looked around the confines of his office and breathed a sigh of relief. The meeting had proven to be quite disconcerting. It wasn’t Fionn’s pointed questions that had made it so, but rather the questions Emile was still unable to answer.
Walking to his desk, he called on Lovelock’s friendly AI for assistance.
“Ganesha. I need you establish a line to the Illuvian compound in Venera. Make sure it’s secured, I need to send a message directly to Paulo Auriga. And it needs to be private.
“Very well, sir. Establishing now...”
It was time to get some answers.
THREE
A CYTHERIAN MORNI
NG, when seen without the interference of protective domes, was quite fascinating. The Sun would crest on the western horizon, and assuming someone could watch without interruption, it would take the equivalent of one hundred sixteen Earth standard days and eighteen standard hours, before it finally set in the east. All told, over half a Cytherean year could be spent watching the Sun rise and set.
As Gallego knew, there were those who engaged in this pursuit at least once in their lifetime. For these folks, a protective suit would be donned, which was necessary thanks to the acid droplets that were known to occur at this altitude. Then, they would step out onto one of the many decks that lined the outer edges of Ishtar and watch the Sun inch its way across the sky. Using an overlay, they would attempt to measure the actual distance and exceed their previous record for watching.
For the more recreational, the process was more involved. These people would greet the morning for one-hundred seventeen days in a row and make a note of the Sun’s progress across the sky each day. And for the most adventurous (or just plain bored), the process would be uninterrupted.
Gallego had seen setups where Sun-followers would attach themselves to viewing columns, watching the sky while the suits and their bodies’ own arrays of bio enhancements ensured they didn’t succumb to malnutrition, dehydration, septicemia, or sleep deprivation. But of course, those who completed the course and didn’t quit partway were rumored to “never be the same again”.
Gallego had never known such interests in her life. To her, seeing the process of the sunrise and sunset on as many astronomical bodies as possible was far preferable to staying in one place. Such had been her preoccupation for the last eight decades of her life. For the first two of these, she hadn’t been old enough to direct the process of herself. But as soon as the legal conventions of her world deemed her an adult free to pursue whatever path she chose, she had left her home and hadn’t looked back.
At that point, she had ceased to be the responsibility of her family and had become the responsibility of the Gyros. Some had called her a liability, but none who knew her personally. Reared on travel and used to life in the depths of space, she felt right at home expanding human settlement at Lagrange points all over the Solar System. Within this extent, she knew there were countless things to experience, and countless ways to measure oneself.
As such, it felt strange to come home, and watch people who specialized in the art of not moving at all. She was certain there was some philosophical truth between these two extremes that she could realize, or at least some inspired poetry. Whichever she came up with, she looked forward to sharing it with Burhan once she returned to the Reach.
Admittedly, she wasn’t sure when that would be. The timing of her return depended heavily on what took place during the next few hours. And of course, that depended almost entirely on what Elenko and the representatives of the Solar Council had in store for her.
The thought made her grimace. She had been back on Venus only a few hours, and already she was feeling the hold of her former mentor. That was part of the reason she’d left Venus in the first place. As Burhan had reminded her shortly after she had related their conversation with him, “You never could say no to that woman.”
“We’ll see,” she said to herself.
Turning away from the window that overlooked the platform, Gallego proceeded back into a nearby atrium. In there, several Cythereans walked about while some sat on the benches surrounding a circular common area. Most of them were looking at overlays and speaking to people via comlink. Some were speaking to Cisne, the planet’s Level IV super-sentience, asking for assistance or requesting information for the sake of their work.
The entire area was surrounded by large panels fashioned from diamond lattices, the light filtering through them to cast rainbow patterns on the floor. Walking among them caused a warm feeling to spread through her. It was the kind of warmth that could only come from being in familiar surroundings; the instant sense of bonheur you get from being back in an old haunt.
She had grown quite tired of places like Ishtar, having spent half of her lifetime among them. And yet, it still felt nice to be back. She even felt relatively at ease about her impending meeting with her old mentor.
Familiarity, the very basis of comfort. Another poetic observation. Perhaps she could find something appropriate later in her vast archive of poetry. Something that Burhan could read over later to get a better idea of how she was feeling about her trip. He would undoubtedly have plenty of sardonic observations to make.
She wondered if she could remember something poetic that could describe the state of punctuality, because she noticed Elenko emerging from the far corridor then. In true Cytherean fashion, she wore a shimmering robe made of diamond filament. On her left breast was the emblem of the Solar Council, a large blaring circle with three smaller circles beneath it. And beneath this, a badge showing a crown of myrtle, indicating the world she represented.
Her arms at her sides in shimmering sleeves spread wide in a welcoming fashion.
“Nika. So nice to see you again, and in person.”
“Madam Councilwoman,” she replied. “It’s an honor.”
The formality made Elenko scoff. “Save the title for the Council meeting, Nika. That is, assuming you’re still interested in sitting in?”
Addressing that point, Gallego raised a finger. “First, I’d like you to explain exactly why I’m here. You seemed deliberately vague during our last conversation.”
Elenko nodded, drawing her lips into a tight grimace. Gallego had known her long enough to know exactly what that expression meant. On the one hand, she was admittedly withholding, but also conveying that there was a good reason for it - which told Gallego just what path this conversation would take.
It would start with Elenko sharing that there was something sensitive happening, or something important at stake. She would then transition to saying that this was why she had called upon her old friend, one of the few people she trusted enough to help her with it. And last, it would involve her appealing to their shared history and Gallego’s sense of adventure, with a few promises of recompense thrown in for good measure.
Gallego decided to move things ahead and save a few minutes. “Just tell me what’s going on, and I will let you know if the meeting is worth my while.”
This made Elenko smile. “That’s easy enough. How closely have you been monitoring the news from the Outer Worlds?”
Gallego eyed the nearest bench and sat down. She also crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. If this was to be a long conversation, she wanted to be comfortable.
“I haven’t really been paying attention,” she admitted. “But I heard there was some kind of ruckus with the Jovian settlements?”
“Well, allow me to correct that ignorance,” Elenko replied. “The problem isn’t only with the Jovians. It’s spreading to the Cronians, the Belt, and even to the Uranians. And it’s all due to a series of events that most of us in the Council can’t make heads or tails of.”
“Really? And what might that be?”
Elenko sat down next to her and waved a hand. Within seconds, a cloud of foglets formed around them, creating a transparent envelop that concealed them from outside noise and ensured privacy. Gallego arched an eyebrow at her.
“That serious, is it?”
“I’m afraid so. Tell me, Nika, have you heard of something called the Jovian Manifesto?”
Gallego called up an overlay and accessed the Survey to do a quick search. Sources abounded, and countless people had grouped themselves into various think-tanks and forums to offer their thoughts and commentary on it. She picked through the more speculative sources and went straight for a copy of the Manifesto itself. A quick download to her neural loom and she could answer the question intelligently.
“I have now. It’s quite the provocative piece of literature, isn’t it? Makes some rather serious claims too.” She took a second to digest it some more. “The Chandrasekhars?
They’re seriously claiming they wanted to depopulate entire worlds? Is this really being taken seriously?”
“Very much,” Elenko replied. “In fact, it has people in both the Jovian and Cronian systems quite riled up right now. The Manifesto appears to have struck a chord with all those who feel the Extro factions have been exploiting their worlds. But up until a few days ago, there was nothing more than demonstrations and protests.”
“A few days ago? What happened then?”
“A... disturbance on Ganymede. A rather serious one at that.”
Gallego sighed. On top of everything else, she now knew precisely where the aforementioned “travel” that Elenko promised would take her, and how it likely involved walking into some serious danger. She expected Elenko would be playing up the trust angle quite a bit now. She couldn’t imagine what else she might try to convince her that this “freelance” mission was worth taking on.
“So? What happened?”
Before she responded, Elenko raised her hand again, causing the foglets to adjust their level of transparency. Within a heartbeat, the bubble that enveloped them had become a concealing shade of charcoal.
Oh shit, Gallego thought. This was going to be bad!
FOUR
FRANKLIN HOUTE LOOKED up to see one of the constables handling the statue of a water nymph. The look on his face was one of appreciable suspicion, but Houte noticed he was taking an interest in the doll’s anatomically-correct features as well. A well-timed interruption felt necessary.
“Be careful with that,” said Houte. “It’s an antique.”
The constable was startled, but thankfully didn’t drop the statue. Placing it back on its shelf, he went about rummaging through some of Houte’s stacks, some of which had already been rifled through by the others. Houte did his best to keep himself occupied with the tablet he had in front of him. On the device’s screen, the current issue of the Callisto Chronicle was displayed.
The Jovian Manifesto Page 3