Now I won’t go into the exact specifics of cloudship courting and breeding practices here. Suffice it to say they are complex, but dancelike. Most of us are spirals, and one has to maneuver the tines of oneself within those of another without destroying that other in the process. Over time we discovered that it is better for males to have cyclonal rotations and for females to have anticyclonal, counterclockwise spins. This is entirely arbitrary, but a great improvement over the old days, when sex could be quite dangerous. Some of the thrill is missing, though, if you ask me—although if you ask me, and you are a female ship of curvaceous proportions, I can promise you to try and overcome my qualms. I am only stating an opinion.
While most of us were engaged in these felicitous practices and in, I must admit, a great deal of politicking, a few of us wished to go farther still, and in the late 2800s, we discovered the Dark Matter Road between the solar system and the double-starred Centauri system. I say we because I was one of those explorers. Using antimatter-reaction engines, enormous speeds are attainable in interstellar space. In 2903, Mark Twain became the first human being to visit another solar system when he arrived at Alpha Centauri during that e-year. I myself arrived there eleven years later.
Through the grist, instantaneous news of this attainment reached us, but we didn’t use the regular merci bands, as I’ve said, and it was debated for many years whether and what to tell the rest of humanity. We finally announced our voyage, but removed human grist from the system. That is why you cannot “go” there on the merci, although you can certainly travel there in person, if you can convince a cloudship who is headed in that direction to take you on. Many non-LAP humans have now made that journey, and their accounts are available on the merci. It may well be that this isolation of our neighboring systems will soon be a thing of the past, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of my story as of yet.
And so we now have children and families who live and play upon the very edge of the solar system, and settlements of a sort, although they are, perhaps, more like “nestling grounds” along the Dark Matter Road. Our children are made almost immediately into ship-LAPs, and built up over time with material from the Oorts and beyond. And we die, some of us—either by choice or accident—and there is a graveyard deep in the reaches between Sol and Centauri, but this is a great secret—not its existence, but its location, and one that I still consider sacred, after so much that was once sacred has now been profaned by this war we have suffered.
Six
While Carmen San Filieu was engaged in the society of New Catalonia, Admiral Carmen San Filieu was about to successfully invade Triton and complete her conquest of the Neptune system. The two San Filieus were, of course, one person—personas of one LAP.
The commander of the Met DIED forces surveyed the Blue Eye of Neptune and wondered what the Mill looked like from this distance. She thought she could just make it out in the swirl, but that was unlikely. It was the Mill she meant to have, soon, and to present it, as a bauble, to Director Amés. How curious that the role she played here was, in a way, the reverse of her life in New Catalonia. In the Department of Immunity Enforcement Division Space Marine Task Force, she was the admiral-suitor, vying among the other brass for Amés’s favor and, hence, more power and autonomy. It was a mark of Amés’s regard for her abilities that she had been assigned to head the invasion force. She did not regard her other relation with Amés as being a determining factor. She had worked for this command, and, being a natural aristocrat, was best suited for it.
San Filieu might, she admitted, rather have been given Jupiter, but Triton was still an honor not to be shunned and would put her in good standing in the line of distinguished San Filieus stretching back to pre-Met days.
On the other hand, it was good to have part of oneself away from New Catalonia, to gain perspective on the life of the bolsa, even as one participated in it. San Filieu could both play the game she enjoyed, and, simultaneously, have other pursuits. That was the advantage of being a LAP, and the advantage, quite frankly, that made LAPs better than other people were. And a New Catalonia LAP . . . well, perhaps the Mercurians could compete. They had produced Amés, after all. It was pleasant to be superior, and to have everyone else know it and envy you for it. As far as San Filieu was concerned, that was what this action against the outer system was all about—to bring about a change to a more appropriate attitude. A bit of shock therapy for the servants.
Yet proper consideration had to be given as to the form such therapy should take, particularly when the servants were being so recalcitrant and stubborn as were the citizens of the Neptune system of moons. She had managed to take four of the eight moons, including Nereid, with its port and warehouses. But Triton had proved more difficult than anticipated. She had even lost a ship.
The fremden had repulsed the first wave of the invasion, taking out a ship and nearly twenty thousand Met soldiers, packed tightly and suspended for the trip, their last memories being entering the brightly lit hold of the Dabna, the destroyed ship, back on the Diaphany at Coalcrutter Port. San Filieu mourned the lost matériel as much as she did the soldiers. Soldiers could be replaced fairly quickly, but some of the invasion machinery was complicated to reproduce—particularly the free convert containment matrixes that were to be used to control the plague of algorithms that infected the moon. This profusion was extraordinarily distasteful to San Filieu, and would have been unthinkable in New Catalonia, where free converts were very carefully confined to specific hardware or specific tasks, and not allowed to wander about freely in the grist. This was a privilege reserved for LAPs alone, and properly so.
But the long night of the bourgeoisie was finally ending, and the sun of monarchy was finally rising once more. The reign of commerce and of the middle class had been, perhaps, necessary, as power moved from agriculture to the fruitful fields of information and finance. But now these fields had been firmly staked out and measured. The cream had risen to the top. It was a natural step to reinstitute the idea of nobility—since there were, in fact, some people who were better than others.
San Filieu turned her gaze from Neptune to the moon Triton. It was hanging in the sky like a yellowish egg. Hobbes was right, she thought. Your life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. I have come to offer you so much more, and in your insolence, you shun me, and through me, your true and rightful king. It will not be borne.
Her porter, Trinitat, brought in her meal, and with it a bottle of Sangre de Torro, her favorite red wine. This was a cabernet, going on eight years now, from the excellent ’06 harvest. The first course of the meal was calçots, a kind of onion, roasted black on the outside. San Filieu dampened her hands in a finger bowl, then took one of the calçots and, grasping it by the greenery, pulled the cooked interior from the burnt exterior. The interior onion bulb came away in a sticky fluid, like a huge pearl. She dipped it in an almond sauce, tilted her head back, and sucked in the meaty white vegetable.
It was so like the taste of Busquets’s young effusions, San Filieu thought. Salty sweet. She sighed.
Seven
Carmen San Filieu, the convert portion of the LAP who was actually in charge of tactics and strategy on this police action against Triton, smiled at the violent indignation of her bodily aspect, the admiral. The woman was right, of course, but a calmer head must decide the means to her end. This was the reason that San Filieu had divided up several of her mental functions in the first place. In New Catalonia Bolsa, her aspect was able to experience envy, jealousy, and societal ambition, while the aspect that accompanied the convert portion of her on the Montserrat could feel all the emotions associated with professional ambition and attainment. For love, there was, of course, the aspect-convert pair on Mercury. But at the moment, complete rationality was called for to deal with the fremden threat, and the thought processes of a virtual entity made for the best solution. It was the best of all possible worlds, being a Large Array of Personas. All ranges
of expression, from the most noble to the most petty, were open to one. Instead of a character in someone else’s novel, you became the novel itself, and one of your personas played the writer.
This commander on Triton, Sherman, was a knave, but not a fool. He’d taken out a DIED destroyer. The file on the man showed him as a West Point graduate. West Point was the rival service academy to San Filieu’s own Sacajawea, the naval academy on the Vas. In many ways, this war—and convert San Filieu had no doubt it was to be a full-fledged war—would be a contest between the versions of modern warfare taught at the Point and at those expounded at Old Sac. West Point graduates commanded most of the Federal Army. Most of the DIED had commanders who were Sacajawea alumni. The outer system, astonishingly, had almost no navy. It was like trying to fight a land war with no air power. Amés, San Filieu, and the other commanders had been aware of this, of course, and it was thought that a rapid space campaign would be the first step to achieve domination—provided the campaign was swift and ruthless.
The next stage of the invasion of Triton was going to be ruthless indeed.
San Filieu called up Captain Bruc and signaled him to join her in the virtuality. He was promptly standing before her. Bruc was diligent and thorough, if a bit unimaginative. He dissipated himself too much in revelry when on leave—San Filieu knew from his file that Bruc had practically had venereal diseases named after him—but on duty, he was a rock. After Bruc arrived, San Filieu ordered the captain of the other surviving ship, the Jihad, into her presence. Meré Philately was not Catalán, as was Bruc, and San Filieu did not trust her as far as her own, handpicked captain of the Montserrat. But Philately was Old Sac ’99, and was, without a doubt, one of the best line officers in the fleet. It was just that, if it ever came down to choosing blood over cleverness, San Filieu would always go with the blood.
“How goes Nereid?” San Filieu asked Philately.
The woman licked her lips and smiled thinly. “We have ten thousand marines in place, Admiral. The population is a bit restless, but under control.”
“Restless?”
“There was isolated resistance, and a warehouse was intentionally destroyed. We’re looking into the contents. Some sort of grist. Agricultural, we think.”
“And your repairs to the Jihad?”
“They are complete, ma’am,” answered Philately.
“That was quick thinking, pulling out when you did, Captain.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“But I hope not an indication of any timidity on your part,” San Filieu continued. “Haven’t gotten gun-shy, have we, Captain?”
“No, ma’am!”
“Good, because we’re about to move into the final stage of this operation, and I’m going to need you in full fighting trim.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In a few hours we’ll move into position to deploy the rip tether, and I’ll need your support fire.”
“We’ll be there with it, ma’am.”
“Good,” San Filieu replied. She turned to Bruc. “Have you got the orbital minefield mapped out?”
“To the best of our ability, ma’am,” said Bruc. “The mines are shifting, and most of them are sentient, so there is a margin of error. But intelligence has been eavesdropping on the fremden force’s knit, and we think we have worked out the code they are using as a passkey for the minefield.”
“Very good,” San Filieu said. “But don’t trust that passkey. The first thing I would do is put a fake one on the vinculum, if it were me down there.”
Bruc seemed a bit put out by this suggestion—he’d seemed so proud of having broken the code—but he stiffened up and answered, “Yes, ma’am!” in his proud Catalán manner, and San Filieu smiled at him. Good blood in the boy. The Brucs owned tobacco, she recalled, and possessed more robotic workers than any other family on New Catalonia.
“The Director has given me full power to deploy the rip tether contained in the Montserrat’s hold, and we will now proceed to do so.” San Filieu straightened and indicated the meeting was coming to a close.
“Aye, aye, Admiral,” Bruc and Philately said in near unison.
“We’ll meet again when the Montserrat is in position for the rip tether deployment. Meanwhile, if I want anything else, I’ll immediately call you both back here into the virtuality. Are there any questions?”
“No, Admiral.”
“Dismissed.”
The two left, Captain Bruc making a bow in addition to his salute as a token of Catalán respect for San Filieu’s social position. It was good to have underlings who knew their place so completely. Very soon, if Carmen San Filieu had her way, the entire outer system would be saluting her as smartly, and with complete deference.
And, like Bruc, they would be made to understand that they were the means, and that San Filieu and her peers were the end toward which humanity should show utter devotion. That was what being better meant.
Eight
They must have stayed there for an hour or more, sitting and standing in turns, almost unable to believe that they had made it down in one piece. Then there was a faint sound.
“Visitors,” said Century in a hoarse voice. She had been yelling her comments most of the way down, and had hardly said a word after their landing, resting her voice.
A clang, and the whole control room shook.
“They want in,” Century said. “Should I give them the key?”
“Who is it?” Andre asked.
“Federal Army, they claim.”
“Well, we’re either going to be rescued or killed, I suppose.”
Century made a gurgling noise that sounded like a bird being strangled. It had evidently been intended as a laugh. “Belay that rescue talk; I’ve got enough fuel left to take us halfway around the sun.”
She had obviously passed along the code key, for a moment later a door to the control room irised open and a man stepped through in the blue-black of the Federal Army, a color that had always seemed to Andre as exactly similar to the color of a bruise. Behind the man were five soldiers, similarly garbed.
“Captain John Quench of the Third Sky and Light Brigade,” the man said. “Would you folks like a lift over to town? There’s a colonel would like to have a talk with you.”
“Hello, John,” Andre said.
“Father Andre?” The man stepped farther into the room and regarded him. “I’ll be goddamned! Excuse me, I mean, this is a surprise.”
“Good to see you,” Andre said. “These people are with me,” he went on. “I’ll vouch for them. All of them.”
Quench gave Century a cold appraisal. Evidently, someone had identified her when she’d called in to identify herself. “Very good, Father,” Quench finally said. “If you folks will follow me to the troop hopper.”
They followed Quench and his men down a long docking port, which retracted itself behind them as they walked, and piled into the hopper. There were twenty other heavily armed soldiers within. Quench obviously wasn’t taking any chances in case of a ruse and ambush, and had brought along backup.
“Corporal Lefty, take us back to the bunker,” he said.
Lefty was a wiry blond woman with a thin line for a mouth. “Yes, sir,” she said, seemingly without parting her lips. They were soon under way.
“Let me bring you up to speed on the current situation as quickly as I can,” Quench said. He was sitting across from the Mrs. Widow passengers, who were all side by side on a bench, squeezed amidst a row of soldiers. They could not see outside, but Andre felt his stomach lurch as the hopper reached the apex of its parabola and started downward to make its next bounce. “They thought they were catching us unawares, but they weren’t,” Quench continued. “Had a grist-based attack a few e-days ago. Broca patch virus. Nasty stuff. Guess it was supposed to soften us up, but it also gave us warning, since we—that is, the Colonel—
figured straight away what it was. It’s still bad, but we got it contained, and the victims cut off from merci realignment, so we don’t have to fight an army of zombies in our midst.” Quench smiled at the thought, but then frowned again. “Took a lot of good people, though. Anyhow, forty-eight hours ago, a rip tether was deployed in orbit. Just one. Things are deucedly expensive to make, I guess. Or maybe they just thought one was enough.”
“Captain, may I inquire as to what a rip tether might be?” said Molly.
“Oh, sorry, ma’am. Jargon there. It’s something like a lift cable—made of the same stuff as the rest of the Met—but they drop it into a nongeosynchronous orbit so that the tail end of it that reaches the ground precedes about like a reverse Foucault’s pendulum.”
“Pardon, officer?”
“A . . . it describes a circle on the ground.” Quench described a circle in the air with his finger. “Only the circle becomes a spiral because the moon is turning under it, if you see what I mean?”
Molly evidently did not, but Quench continued.
“The point is,” he said, “that it’s a half a kilometer thick and it digs a furrow a hundred meters deep. It destroys all in its wake, ma’am.”
“I see,” Molly said. “Such as cities.”
“That’s right, ma’am. The rip tether’s made a pass through New Miranda already. Sliced a diagonal across the town, and caused a lot more collateral damage. Damned destructive.” Quenched slapped his knee, as if to express his anger at the memory, which he carefully kept from his face. “Damn destructive. We are attempting to deal with that threat at the moment, though I won’t go into details.”
“You mean it’s coming back?”
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