The Sky Woman

by JD Moyer

  The thought reminded him that he had lost access to direct observations of the villagers. He was furious with Car-En. Never had a student shown such insolence and poor judgment. He put the thought out of his mind; he couldn’t afford to be upset right now. The Council meeting would require an even-keeled temperament. He would deal with Car-En later.

  Adrian reached the concourse of the Council Hall, passing by elaborate artistic fountains, hollow bronze sculptures, carefully manicured trees, and other decorative elements that were constantly being updated and tweaked in accordance with current tastes and passing design fads. All a waste of time and resources, in his opinion. The only thing that matters is Repop. He passed through a wind wall into the main atrium. It was refreshingly cool inside, which helped him focus. There was just one thing that needed to happen at this meeting. With a little luck, he could pull it off.

  His footsteps echoed in the large hall. A few people nodded at him. They all looked vaguely familiar. He was still newly elected, and generally bad with names and faces. But it didn’t matter. What was important was that people knew his name, and that was more true than ever now that he finally held a seat on the Repop Council. He’d served as an advisor for years, but now he had real power, a vote. One vote wasn’t much, but the Non-Interventionists were easy to manipulate. In effect, he already controlled a voting bloc.

  He entered the Council Chamber. Along with a few other Council members, Penelope Townes was already seated. This annoyed him; he had hoped to arrive first (maybe he should have taken the tram after all). On the other hand, she looked tired and distracted, which was good.

  “Hello, Adrian. Here you are again.” Townes smiled wryly, unwilling to even pretend that she was happy to see him. Despite being a departmental colleague, she had stridently opposed his election campaign (though he had to admit her opposition had been on the up-and-up, no dirty tricks or character smears).

  “Hello, Penny. Late night last night?” Her Academy nickname was too informal for this setting, especially considering her seniority on the Council. But he wanted to push her buttons.

  Townes seemed unruffled. “Yes, in fact, we were out last night. Council member Troy and I” – she gestured to a timid-looking young man on her left – “closed out Vick’s Lounge. Slope-4, Starside, have you been there? It’s new.” She continued without waiting for an answer. “We were brainstorming about the villagers, a long-term integration plan. Xenus has some excellent ideas, some of which we’ll be discussing today.” Xenus Troy smiled shyly at Adrian. Adrian pretended not to notice.

  Townes was about sixty, and attractive, but looked her age. She didn’t seem to mind having a few wrinkles, and had ribbed Adrian after his rejuv, calling him vain. She had an unkempt beauty, with highly symmetrical features, large, green eyes, and long, wavy gray hair, which she usually wore up in a bun. Most of the men in the anthropology department, including Adrian, had had a crush on her at one time or another; she was not only beautiful but also intelligent and charismatic. But her main characteristic was ambition. Her momentous discovery of living descendants of the Remnant Age was indisputably the most important finding in ringstation history. Even so, it had still taken some maneuvering for Townes to wrangle the Research Director position (Gupjay, the previous occupant, hadn’t been quite ready to step down). On paper, as Department Head, Adrian was still her senior, but Townes had more influence. Or at least she had, before Adrian’s election to Repop. Now they would see.

  The remaining Council members had filtered in. The venerable Kardosh (well over one hundred years old) brought them to order. The first hour of the meeting consisted of design proposals for various aspects of settlement infrastructure, including temporary dome housing, water filtration systems, solar generators, waste composting soil-makers, and so forth. The main criterion for settlement-bound objects and devices was an unprecedented level of sturdiness and durability. Eventually Earth would once again house industrial production facilities equivalent to those on the Stanford’s Sub-2 level, including full-spectrum elemental printing of intricate machinery and computing devices, but first-gen settlers would have to make do with basic life-support machines, albeit rock-solid ones.

  Kardosh cleared his throat and moved them on to the next item on the agenda. “Field research. Townes, what do the Kim brothers have to report?”

  Harry and Bruce Kim were twins, anthropology field students who reported to Penny. The brothers had been observing what were believed to be the descendants of an ancient Israeli kibbutz, a communal agricultural society that had somehow endured the Remnant Age relatively intact (probably due to a combination of being extremely well-armed and having a vast supply of fruit and nut trees). Unlike the pseudo-Vikings that Car-En was studying, the kibbutzniks were literate, monotheistic, and all in all relatively civilized. The Kim brothers had even floated the possibility that the commune residents were aware of the existence of the ringstations; certainly they could not rule it out. While the descendants of the Israeli Jews were a technologically devolved culture (farming just above subsistence, using human and animal labor and simple wooden tools), they were culturally sophisticated, and had perhaps even retained some crude level of scientific literacy (at least in regards to food production techniques, medicine, and animal husbandry). In terms of metallurgy and modern materials, they had lost everything, but that, according to Townes, was irrelevant. The kibbutzniks were the best-known candidates for contact and possible integration.

  Townes presented m’eye feeds from the Kims. Men and women in loose white shifts tended the orchards, which at first glance appeared to be planted chaotically, without rows and columns, but upon closer examination revealed a relaxed order structured around a vein-like irrigation system. The kibbutz agriculture was intensely polycultural: almond trees planted next to fig trees and apricot trees, legume vines winding along underneath, chickens everywhere, ducks paddling along in the irrigation canals, a few cows lounging in the shade.

  “It looks messy,” said Townes, “but in fact it’s a sophisticated system, especially in terms of water conservation and nitrogen recycling. Some of the agricultural techniques we’re seeing are consistent with high-yield, sustainable practices from the Revival Age. Though, to be fair, some of those techniques were pioneered by Late Corporate Age counterculturalists, in a spirit contrary to the zeitgeist of that time.”

  Spare us. Adrian bit his lip. He could tolerate only so much of Penny’s pseudo-intellectual drivel. There was no single zeitgeist of the Late Corporate Age; Earth civilization had collapsed from its heady peak due to a plethora of warring philosophies, a mess of disparate visions that had ultimately resulted in massive non-action. Inertia had taken its course, and a complex global society radically unprepared for depopulation had crumbled (this, despite a century of warnings and predictions from demographers and statisticians).

  “What protocols are the Kim brothers using to prevent detection?” asked Polanski. One of the younger members of the Council, Polanski was a prim rule-follower, and one of the staunchest Non-Interventionists. Adrian considered her part of his voting bloc. As long as a decision could be framed in terms of going ‘by the book,’ Polanski would vote for it.

  “The feed is zoom-enhanced,” Townes answered. “This one in particular came from Bruce Kim, cloaked and also hiding in dense foliage, from a two-hundred-meter distance.” Polanski pursed her lips and nodded.

  Kardosh cleared his throat. Having captured everyone’s attention, he paused, twirling his mustache and staring at the projection image. Adrian could never tell if Kardosh’s mannerisms were due to the eccentricities of an aged mind or if he was hamming it up for dramatic effect. Finally he spoke. “Could there be another reason for the…disorganized…planting schema?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Townes.

  “Well, at our last meeting you mentioned that the Kims had hypothesized the kibbutzniks might well be aware of us, the ringstations. What
evidence did they present to that effect?”

  “Bits of lore they had translated,” Townes answered. “References to ‘sky people.’”

  “And what was the context of these mentions?” asked Kardosh sharply. Any whiff of elderliness had disappeared; Kardosh’s interrogative tone put the chamber on high alert. Kardosh had earned authority not only from seniority; he was astute, a formidable analyst, and suffered no fools.

  “I would have to review the data,” Townes responded lamely.

  “Please do. It occurs to me that this haphazard planting may serve an obfuscatory purpose, to render the settlement less visible from space. Had that occurred to you?”

  “I had considered it,” said Townes, in a way that made it clear that she hadn’t. “In contrast, the mountain villages employ classical planting methods; that’s part of what initially caught my attention and led to the initial discovery…”

  That and the giant bonfires, thought Adrian, but he managed to hold his tongue. Kardosh was doing his work for him.

  “…but the kibbutz was much harder to find,” Townes continued. “Ultimately it was the herds of goats that gave them away.”

  “They should have no reason to fear us,” said Kardosh, “but if there is evidence to indicate that they do, please make the Council aware.”

  “Of course,” said Townes, slightly too loudly. Adrian suppressed a grin. What a blowhard, and Kardosh had taken her down two notches without Adrian having to open his mouth. But he could revel in schadenfreude later; the next bit was going to be tricky. He needed to focus.

  Kardosh turned to a tall, pale, blond man, one who had yet to speak during the meeting. “Svilsson – do you have an intermediate report on the Sardinians?” Svilsson shook his head. At last week’s meeting he’d presented feeds and written reports from the field researcher Han. Improbably – given their proximity to Campi Flegrei – a small community of gardeners and shepherds had escaped the immediate and total annihilation that had befallen Italy, Greece, Slovenia, and western Turkey. Wind patterns had spared the Mediterranean islanders the lethal torrents of burning ash. The Sardinians, a tough and stubbornly traditional people with a tight-knit communal lifestyle, had survived the ages with a way of life little changed since the late Neolithic. They had briefly embraced plumbing and electricity in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but easily reverted to the old ways when those improvements proved unsustainable.

  Svilsson, who abhorred talking, had presented Han’s reports in written form, and the selected m’eye feeds were devoid of commentary. Adrian did not confuse silence for stupidity; he suspected Svilsson was perfectly capable of articulate speech when required. Which way would Svilsson lean? Townes and Svilsson had collaborated on projects in the past, so Adrian tentatively placed him in the enemy camp.

  “What do you have for us, Vanderplotz?” asked Kardosh. “How is our dear Car-En? Her last biostat report gave us cause for alarm – as I recall she’d been eating nothing but nutrient bars and was running a severe caloric deficit. Has the situation been corrected? She is adequately equipped and trained to hunt the local fauna, is she not? Or at least procure edible plants? The prefabricated food supply was never intended to be anything but supplemental.”

  “Car-En is doing much better,” Adrian said. He glanced at Penny, who was eyeing him suspiciously. He willed himself to ignore her. Using his m’eye, he directed the prerecorded feed to the main projector. The holographic image at the center of the conference table sprang back to life. This time, instead of farming kibbutzniks, the Council members were presented with a mountain vista, rocky terrain with scattered spruce trees, and a narrow, dark cave disappearing into the earth. A half-dozen burly, bearded men, together with a few lanky boys, labored, climbing in and out of the cave, filling up small carts with reddish chunks of rock.

  “Miners,” said Xenus Troy. It was a sharp observation, non-obvious, considering that no ringstation citizen had seen anything resembling this sort of mining. Ringstation minerals – and all other elements – were one hundred per cent recycled. In the rare instance when additional raw materials were required, they were extracted from near-Earth asteroids (or occasionally from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) by mining drones.

  “Interesting!” exclaimed Kardosh, clearly delighted. “The source of the raw ore – a missing piece of the puzzle. Did they construct the mineshaft themselves?”

  “There are dozens of ancient mines in the area, some from the Corporate Age, but many from much earlier,” answered Adrian. “The Harz region is rich in silver, copper, lead, and iron. Some of these old mines they have repurposed and reinforced. All of the labor is done by hand, but their shovels and picks are fabricated from high-quality steel.”

  “Fabricated?” Kardosh raised a bushy eyebrow. “Don’t you mean forged?”

  “Yes, that would be more accurate,” said Adrian, trying to hide his irritation. He glanced at Townes, who was – predictably – smirking. Townes still considered herself the preeminent expert on the Happdal villagers, and resented Adrian for taking over the project. It hadn’t been hard. Adrian had persuaded Gupjay, as his final act as Research Director, to assign Happdal to Car-En Ganzorig, the department’s star field student. Car-En’s unswerving devotion to Adrian as her advisor and mentor thereby put Happdal firmly in his territory.

  “What do they use for light?” Xenus Troy asked. “Oil lanterns? Is smoke a problem? Are there ventilation shafts?”

  “We’ve seen them mine both with and without lanterns,” answered Adrian. “Some of the villagers have wildstrain-enhanced vision.”

  “Is this a m’eye feed?” asked Townes. “It looks a little fuzzy, and the angle is high.”

  “A swarm feed,” Adrian admitted. “After some close calls, Car-En has tightened her observation protocols. She’s been using the drones for surveillance.” The lie felt natural and easy, as it always did when Adrian felt justified in his motives.

  “Split swarm?” asked Polanski. “She is maintaining a security perimeter at all times, yes?”

  “Of course,” Adrian said. He was relaxing into the presentation. This was going to work. He presented swarm feeds of mundane village activities for the next ten minutes, keeping his own commentary to a minimum. The Council members watched, enrapt, and Adrian remembered his own early fascination with watching the day-to-day routines of the villagers. It was like owning a time machine.

  “Has Car-En made any progress in locating the carcinogenic radiation source?” asked Kardosh. “U-233, was it? That could be from a thorium fuel cycle.” Kardosh was best known for his work as a historical biologist specializing in molecular evolution, but he was also medically trained, and knowledgeable in a number of scientific fields.

  “Not yet,” Adrian lied. “But she has narrowed down the search area via triangulation. It’s possible the source is underground, contaminating the water supply.” A little truth made the lie more plausible.

  “We’d probably need an engineering group to contain it,” Townes mused, “but if we locate the source, it’s doable. A skeleton crew with the right gear could do it.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Kardosh. “We don’t know what’s leaking, we don’t know how hot it is, and we don’t know if we can do anything about it.”

  “It’s got to be a homebrew reactor of some sort,” Townes countered. “There are extensive containment protocols – the Japanese got really creative toward the end.”

  “I’m aware of the methods,” said Kardosh.

  “Wait a minute,” Polanski blurted, “are we talking about Intervention?”

  “The point of Non-Interventionism is to avoid cultural contamination,” snapped Townes, “not to stand by and watch a tragedy unfold in slow motion. These are people, human beings like us. The Harz villages represent about one per cent of all human beings in existence. To not act would be a form of genocide. Slaught
er through passivity and inaction.”

  That shut Polanski up. Adrian quickly checked the math in his head. The Ringstation Coalition was home to roughly six hundred thousand souls, spread out among the eleven ringstations and a number of smaller cylindrical and spherical vessels. Happdal was home to about three hundred; that number combined with the population of the nearby villages might just exceed one thousand. So the real number was about 0.16 per cent; Townes was off by a factor of six. Typical. He considered pointing out the error, decided against it, and glanced at Kardosh to see if the old man had caught the mistake. Kardosh was staring thoughtfully into space; he had missed it.

  Adrian took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any. Polanski, mortified, was staring at her hands, Townes was trying to compose herself, and the silence was getting uncomfortably long.

  “That’s all I have to present today, but if I might, I’d like to insert a proposal into the agenda.”

  “Today?” asked Kardosh, surprised.

  “Yes, time permitting. Council members Townes and Troy, I’d like your permission to present my proposal before your own. The project is highly time-sensitive, and I’d like to secure the unanimous approval of this Council before taking even the first step.”

  He paused and faced Townes. He’d nailed it. All of them, even Townes and Troy, were burning with curiosity. And Townes had just come down too hard on Polanski, in effect accusing her of genocide. She would defer to Adrian in order to appear co-operative, to put the needs and wishes of the group over her own ambition.

  “I don’t see why you can’t submit agenda items ahead of time, like everybody else,” Townes snapped. He’d guessed wrong.

  “Take it easy, Penelope,” said Kardosh. “Is your proposal time-sensitive?”

  “It could probably wait a week,” Troy acceded, eliciting a glare from Townes.