by John Kessel
“This place is crippled,” he said. “It’s going to be a long time before it’s a functioning society again. There will be unrest and conflict for years. Plus, you don’t know how people live here, what it’s like.”
“I want to be a part of the Society if there’s a place for me.”
“There may not be a Society anymore. Plus, it’s dead boring. You’re going to miss the stores and theaters.”
“We can visit Persepolis now and then.”
“After your father gets through with Fowler, I’m not sure Eskander is a name that will be popular around here.”
“We’ll work to make a place for ourselves. Unless you can’t stand it here and need to escape.”
Erno shook his head. “No, I want to stay, too.”
They talked for an hour, had something to eat, and talked still further into the night. He told her his story of the disaster. To have Amestris here, to be able to touch her, hear her voice, see her move, was almost more than he could fathom. It made him very happy. Only gradually did it come to Erno that Amestris wanted to live here as much for her own reasons as to be with him. When he touched her he could feel her fear that he might realize it.
It was a blow, but not as much as he might have imagined. At least she wanted to be here.
The next morning her father joined them for breakfast. After they’d finished, Cyrus said, “Amestris, my dear, I would like to speak with Erno in private. Do you mind stepping out for a while?”
“Not at all.” Erno watched her as she got up and walked out of the suite, cool as a shadow.
Too many people were dead for them to play games. “What do you want?”
Cyrus folded his serviette and placed it beside his plate. “I want to talk to you about the future of the Society. Specifically, I want to discuss with you the possibility of your taking on the job of OLS administrator of the interim government.”
Erno almost laughed out loud. “Are you joking?”
“I do not believe so, no.”
“I have no experience of government. I—”
“You have run a successful business. You have lived in a dozen different lunar colonies. You have served the OLS as a SCOCOM investigator. And most significantly, you were born and raised in the Society of Cousins.”
“I’m a traitor to the Society.”
“You’re an agent of change,” Cyrus said. “People saw you rescuing the injured, they heard you talk about how people outside the Society of Cousins looked to it for hope. They know you urged those in the tower to take refuge in the underground station before the second blast.”
“I didn’t get to give the warning about your intentions that I was going to give.”
“That’s unfortunate. It would have served you well to have gotten that on the record.”
“You should know, if I have any say in the matter, you will be arrested for mass murder.”
Cyrus looked as calm as gravity. “You do me a grave injustice.”
“You sent Sirius here to do your work.”
“I did not send him here to kill anyone.”
“You must have known that he was insane.”
“That is a terribly humanist thing to say. Sirius was a dog. His motives did not always translate into human terms.”
Erno did not need to argue. He needed to write down what he knew, and the more he told Cyrus, the more Cyrus would be prepared to thwart him. “Why are you asking me?”
“Carey Evasson was asked to be the administrator of the protectorate the OLS will establish here. He would have been ideal for that job. Now we have to find someone else. You are my son-in-law. I know you care about the Society of Cousins. I think you might be our best choice.”
“It’s not your choice to make. Besides, I’m too young for this job.”
“In a new beginning, youth is a good thing. The person to take on this responsibility needs to be a Cousin. But it can’t be someone who has ever held public office in the Society. The OLS wants a completely new administration.”
“That will make for a very inexperienced government. You’re throwing away expertise, institutional memory, continuity. It will be a mess.”
“Perhaps at first things will not run as efficiently as they might. That’s unavoidable.”
“You don’t need me. You need a woman, for one thing. Appoint Hypatia Camillesdaughter. She’s never held political office, and she’s been vocal in opposition to the Matrons. I’m sure she would leap at the opportunity.”
“For OLS—and my own—purposes, it should be a man. The man I want is you.”
“No, thank you.”
“If not you, then Thomas Marysson.”
“Not that again. You used him to get me onto SCOCOM. Is he the only argument you’ve got?”
“I have the argument that you care about the Society of Cousins and do not want to see it destroyed. Make no mistake, there will be changes. Even if you take this job, you will not be able to prevent all of them.
“But you can prevent some, perhaps. You can see that the changes are made in the least disruptive way. You can integrate them into the existing social structure, as much as possible. You may seek advice from Cousins: There will be a Board of Citizens, and a Majlis. You have ideas, I know. You are a man who senses another’s soul. The Society will be well served by your good intentions.”
Erno thought about it. Hadn’t he spent most of his youth complaining about the people who ran the world? Cyrus clearly thought he could manipulate Erno, but Erno knew the Society in a way that Cyrus never could. He could seek the opinions of the Matrons and make sure that their vision was not obliterated. He could protect the most vulnerable and ensure some semblance of justice.
It all depended on how far he could trust Cyrus.
“That story you told me about Bahrâm Gur,” Erno said. “You’re asking me to take the role of the new headman appointed to rule the disobedient village. As if I will act as your factotum, only in your interests. Which I will not do.”
“I would not expect otherwise. The history of Persia is the history of kings in conflict with their most powerful champions.”
“You’re not a king, and I would never be your champion.”
Cyrus inclined his head. “I stand corrected.”
It would be a test of Erno’s character, the most difficult test he could imagine, and he seriously doubted that he was up to it. He was not a leader. He was the one who muttered sarcastic comments in the back of the room while the leader was doing serious things up in the front.
“I’ll need to have the power to appoint administrators,” Erno said. “To appoint judges.”
“With some consultation, yes.”
“I want this in writing.”
“The duties and powers of the administrator will be laid out in all specifics.”
“Amestris will move here. We’ll live here permanently. We will not associate with you. I will make it clearly understood, publicly, that we are not working for you—rather the opposite.”
“I agree that this will be the best way to go forward,” Cyrus said.
Erno held out his left hand. “Shake my hand.”
Cyrus looked at it, looked Erno in the eyes, then took it in his own. Thirty-six degrees centigrade.
“You’ll follow through on all of these things?” Erno said.
“I will,” Cyrus said.
Nothing but sincerity. Erno let go of his hand.
“So, you will take on this difficult work?” Cyrus asked.
“Yes,” Erno said.
THIRTY YEARS LATER
CHAPTER
SIXTEEN
THE PASSENGERS ON THE MORNING rocket from Mayer were tourists, businessmen, some OLS bureaucrats, university students on exchange programs, a group of musicians from Linne, and a few Fowler residents returning from vacations on Earth. Erno went directly to his assigned first class compartment.
He took two serentol and opened the book of poems he’d been reading.
What
is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house his wife his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the withered field where the farmer plows for bread in vain
A family came into the compartment and took their seats: man, woman, daughter. The daughter was about twelve and sat across from Erno next to her mother, while the man settled into the acceleration chair beside Erno. The man fussed with his straps, asked his wife and daughter if they had theirs secure, then, lying back in the chair, had a good look at Erno. He did an almost comic double take.
The man twisted against the straps to hold out his hand. “Akira Forbush, sir.”
Erno looked at the man’s hand. He took it, gave it a firm shake. The impression flooded into him that Akira Forbush was a vain man who thought himself honest, so caught up in his own view of things that he was incapable of imagining another. “My wife, Helen, daughter Yuriko,” Forbush said. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Thank you,” Erno said, returning to his book. Without encouragement perhaps the man might leave him alone.
“Where are you returning from, Administrator Pamelasson?” Forbush asked.
“Please, just Pamson. I had some business to attend to in Mayer.”
“Representing Fowler?”
“No, as a private citizen.”
“Eskander Design,” his wife said. “You did the Mayer environmental reboot. The birds! We grew up in Mayer.”
“We market treehouses,” Forbush said. “Sylvan Homes.”
“Yes, of course,” Erno said. “I’ve seen your work.”
“You’re getting back in time for the ceremony?” Forbush asked. “They’re expecting protests.”
“I think it’s a good thing to let people air their grievances,” Erno said.
Helen said, “We thought these matters were settled twenty years ago, or we would never have moved to Fowler.”
They didn’t want to hear a different opinion, but lately Erno had been having trouble maintaining his equanimity. “We had conflict back then, too.”
“But you put them down when they got restive,” Forbush said. “Like the Alisonsdaughter Rape protests.”
“There was considerable debate within the administration whether that was the right course of action.”
“In a situation like this, it doesn’t do to equivocate,” Helen said.
Forbush gave Erno a look twenty degrees cooler than he had in the beginning. “Equivocation is the politician’s stock-in-trade,” he said to his wife.
Erno was saved—all of them were saved—by announcement of the takeoff sequence. The screen above them switched to a view of the ship’s berth. Then the rocket launched and acceleration pressed them down into their couches. After only a few minutes the engines cut out and they were in free fall. A shallow trajectory, twenty minutes of zero gravity, then deceleration.
“I feel sick,” the girl said.
Her mother pulled an inhaler from her carryall and made the girl take a sniff. Erno turned off his book and closed his eyes. He let his hand, his damned stolen left hand, float above his chest and listened to the mother’s low voice distracting the girl with talk of the live music they had planted in her grandmother’s apartment and how much more developed it would be the next time they visited.
Erno’s attempts over the years to track down Alois Reuther had been futile. He’d searched multiple colony records. He’d obtained lists of indigents consigned to the freezers in eight colonies. He’d called in favors from OLS immigration monitors. He’d leaned on business associates and clients in other colonies. In the end he’d traveled to Mayer in person, not so much because he hoped to find out anything he had not discovered otherwise, but to reconnect with the boy he’d been forty years ago.
The Hotel Gijon had been transformed into luxury condos. He could not visit the room where he had lived while there, nor Alois’s suite, as walls had been torn out and completely reconstructed. He spent an uneasy half an hour in the home of a commodities broker and her family, sitting on an expensive sofa that must have been more or less where his gel mat had lain. While his gracious hosts asked him about Fowler’s politics, he looked at the white wall opposite him and imagined the stuttering eagle soaring over terrestrial mountains. In the hallway outside he flashed on the feel of Alois’s hand on his chest.
He went down to the Café Seville, which had managed to make itself over as quaint instead of shabby. He sat on the fresh tiles of the patio and watched the flaneurs saunter down the street as he drank a demitasse of strong coffee. The Mayer air was clean, thanks to the environmental redesign he and Amestris had supervised. He inhaled slowly, and let it out.
After a while he got up and inspected the alley where he had found Alois’s hand. It was much as it had been forty years earlier. There was nothing to see, but when he closed his eyes the image of Alois lying on the settlement agent’s cart, handless arm hanging off the side, rose before him. These images were coming to him more and more. He fantasized going back into the café and borrowing a cleaver to cut off the hand and throw it into the back of the alley, freeing himself of it and its suggestions, reminders, memories.
He’d thought the hand would be an asset in his political career. It would tell him if someone was lying. He would sense their moods, what they wanted and did not want, and be able to manipulate them. He’d leaned on that ability. It hadn’t proved to be as useful as he had thought.
Eventually, every time he touched someone, a sense of that person’s soul washed over him. But knowing another’s soul didn’t mean you could make them do what you wanted. Some opposed him simply because of that deformed character he was now so accurately reading. The inestimable advantage became a source of anxiety. He wondered if this might just be some mental disorder that he was generating from his own need to know what others were thinking. It became a burden, a torment that made him reluctant to touch anyone.
Following the career of a politician when you had no real aptitude for it might threaten to produce tragedy, but most of what eventuated was farce.
“Passengers please prepare for deceleration,” the transport announced. Erno opened his eyes. Helen Forbush gathered in the floating tablet tethered to her daughter’s wrist and slid it into her carryall. On the screen above them the rugged surface of farside passed below, harsh sun throwing solid black shadows. Deceleration began. The transport vibrated with the force of the jets and gravity returned. Twenty minutes later, an hour after they’d left Mayer, it landed in Fowler Port.
Erno retrieved his bag, cleared customs, and caught the train from the spaceport to the colony. The Forbushes were in the same car, along with a tour group. As the train swooped up the crater exterior before entering the tunnel to the colony, they had a good look back at the gleaming spaceport, constructed during Erno’s second term as head of the OLS Provisional Authority. He knew every detail of the graft and corruption involved. Still, it was beautiful.
At the station Erno told his bag to follow him and walked out to the tram platform. In the pull-up outside the entrance, a private vehicle awaited the Forbushes, but Erno insisted on using public transit. Forbush gave Erno a sideways glance as his family climbed into the car while Erno waited on the platform.
The leader of the tour group assembled his party at the scenic overlook at the back of the tram platform. Above them stretched the bright blue sky, faux sunlight broken by puffy white clouds; below lay the expanse of the crater interior. Standing on the pavement while his charges milled around taking videos, the tour leader launched into his spiel.
“Welcome to Fowler, home of the notorious Society of Cousins, site of the largest-grossing romance in the history of the solar system, Julianna Bennet’s Sunlight or Rock. We are standing within the largest hard-domed crater on the moon. This crater, which is not properly the crater Fowle
r but a much smaller, symmetrical impact crater within Fowler proper, was domed in the year 2085, twenty-two years after the emigration of the Society of Cousins from California, on Earth, in 2063.”
The tourists looked out over the landscape. Since the rebuild, its floor had been turned over to luxury residences and office buildings. Huge residential tree homes with human-integrated architectural additions sprawled over most of the land that had once grown food crops. But Sobieski Park was still there and the Diana Tower still rose from its center.
“Over on the western slope you’ll see the ruins of the Men’s House, where Dirk Taylorsson made his deadly vow in Bennet’s tale of star-crossed love. To the south, on that little rise, stands the Temple of Diana, damaged in the dome breach of 2149, scene of Naswalla West’s forbidden tryst with Scarlett Sapphosdaughter. Goddess worship is still practiced among the citizens; almost fifty percent of the current population still self-designate as ‘Cousins.’
“What you see looking out over this landscape today differs in some ways from the setting of the novel, in the days when the Amazon-led Board of Matrons ruled over a population of aggressive women, complaisant males, and downtrodden persons of variable gender. If you turn on your augmentation you may superimpose images of that time over your visual field. I remind you, if you do so, to watch your step. For those of you so inclined, Experience Travel can provide a VR tour of the Society as it existed before the OLS intervention, during which you may interact sexually and otherwise with Scarlett, Naswalla, Dirk, the Matron Elainesdaughter, and all the other characters we have come to know and love.”
The serentol had worn off and Erno could not wait to get home. When the tram arrived the tourists piled in. Their leader chatted with them about the upcoming memorial ceremonies marking the thirtieth anniversary of the dome disaster.
Erno got off at the university stop. Across from the station a Faravahar mosaic lifted its wings above the entrance of the Zoroastrian temple. He walked down the crater slope to his neighborhood, his bag following behind him.