by Isaac Asimov
Chapter 37
ARIEL RAN DOWN the corridor until she saw a stairwell. She glanced in and saw that it only went up, so she took it, on the chance that she was undergound. One flight up, she opened the door and came face to face with Basq.
“You live,” he said. “A fortunate surprise.”
“For both of us.”
Static flared from the complex intercom. “Attention. This facility will be evacuated within five minutes, on the orders of Terran Military Command. All personnel evacuate immediately. Terran Military Command assumes no responsibility for loss of life and property following five minutes from the broadcast of this message.”
Basq bared his teeth in a feral grin. “A good day to die, as the saying goes.”
“A better day to get out and live,” Ariel said. “Let’s go.”
“If they will hunt me here, they will hunt me anywhere,” Basq said.
“I was naïve to believe that you could protect us.”
The comment stung, but Ariel let it pass. “Basq, I need you to survive this. Is Gernika destroyed?”
“Gernika was always destroyed. It is in the nature of Gernika to suffer destruction.” The cyborg was coming apart, Ariel realized. “I have already visited Zev Brixa. Now I seek only Parapoyos, and my work will be done.”
A pair of Nucleomorph security personnel came around the nearest corner. Seeing Basq, they leveled their weapons. “Stay right there!”
“Basq,” Ariel said. She felt his motion rather than saw it; he was gone before the guards had finished shouting. One of them fired reflexively, gouging a hole in the wall less than a meter from her.
She dove to the floor with a scream, and the guards ran to her.
One of them hung back a little, covering her with his rifle, while the other squatted. “Who are you?” he shouted in her face.
“Ariel Burgess, legal liaison to the Triangle,” she said.
Disbelief was plain on the guard’s face. She was naked, and had immediately before been seen talking to Basq. It was easy to see how that would be difficult to square with her claimed identity.
“Look,” Ariel said. “Arrest me if you want, just as long as you do it once we’ve gotten out of here. We’ve got to stop this.”
They were coming out the front doors, and Ariel had just convinced one of the guards to lend her his comm, when the first raider buzzed in low over the trees and began firing. The first volley blew out three walls of the first building she had toured with Brixa. All those people, recuperating in their berths, their lives blown out like candles for the sin of wanting to live. Ariel was screaming, stabbing emergency codes into the comm and demanding access to Exa Lamina, Kalienin, someone in the Terran military who could stop this. Her calls were intercepted by a military monitor with a voice like cold ashes, who informed her that no communication was permitted from her location at that time.
“You inhuman bastard!” she sobbed at him. “There are children in there!”
“You need to get yourself out of there, Miss Burgess,” the monitor said.
He terminated the link, and Ariel looked up to see two more military craft converging on the complex. The guards dragged her across the open field to the fence, and through it to the other side, where she watched building after building disintegrate in blinding flashes and columns of smoke. Ariel stared at the carnage long after the explosions had blinded her. In the afterimages, she saw the bright colors and simple shapes of the playroom, with its children running and laughing with joy at the strength of their new bodies.
When it was done, elements of the Nova Levis militia arrived in a column of aerial transports. A medic draped a blanket around her.
She accepted it and walked away, refusing his attempts to examine her. Her only injury was the small tear at the inside of her left elbow, and allowing him to treat it when there must have been other survivors in the wreckage of Nucleomorph would have been an obscenity.
Enough obscenity, Ariel thought. Enough of all of this. If Brixa and Krista Weil are dead, and Basq, does that justify this?
I will take part no longer.
An aerial fire-suppression crew appeared and began foaming the ruins. Ariel watched it, and at first didn’t notice that someone had sat on the ground next to her. After a while she looked over and saw Derec.
“I went in there looking for you,” he said. “Basq told me you’d already gotten out, but I wasn’t sure whether to believe him.”
“Basq doesn’t lie. At least he never did to me. He held things back, but he never told me an active falsehood.”
“Puts him a step above the rest of them.”
Ariel nodded.
“I saw him kill Parapoyos,” Derec said.
Still nodding, Ariel said, “He said he was going to.” After a pause, she added, “Where did he go after that?”
Derec shrugged. “He didn’t say. I doubt he got out.”
For a while they watched the foam settle over Nucleomorph. Then Ariel said, “Kalienin did this. And Lamina.”
“Not just them,” Derec said. His face was bleak, and even after everything she’d gone through in the last day, Ariel found herself afraid to hear what he might say.
Yet she gathered herself and said, “Tell me.”
It was a week or so later that Ariel answered a knock at her door to find Filoo shifting his weight from foot to foot, and trying, without much success, to look her in the eye. “I’m surprised to see you, Filoo,” she said. “Did you survive Gernika?”
“I got out, yeah.” Filoo tried to bite back what was coming next, but he couldn’t. “Because Vorian tipped me off.”
“Anyone seen Masid?”
Filoo shook his head. “Be blunt about it, I don’t think anyone’ll ever find him without running a gene sampler over the whole place. It’s not easy having to be grateful to that conniving sneak.”
Ariel had to laugh. “Do you want to come in?”
“No. I came to tell you about a meeting you should go to.” He handed her a flimsy with a handwritten address and date on it. The address was in New Nova, the date two days away. There was no signature, but below the information was a crude outline of a horse trying to rise to its feet.
Ariel folded it into a pocket. “I’ll be there.”
“Avery, too,” Filoo said, and walked away.
She walked to Derec’s lab. He didn’t want to leave, but she showed him the note, and he frowned and followed her outside.
“Basq?” he asked when they’d walked some distance down the street into a residential block.
“Filoo was the courier. I’m not sure who else he’d be running messages for.”
“So Filoo’s alive, too.” Derec mused over this. “I’ve got Hofton’s datum in storage. I wonder how much he knows.”
“If they know Basq is alive, they might do something again.” It was still hard for Ariel to speak directly of Hofton. She had known him — it — for years, and felt deeply betrayed by his subterfuge. Also murderously angry about his provocation of the Gernika massacre.
Yet there was vindication at her furious opposition to Derec’s construction of Bogard — how many people were dead now because Bogard and Hofton had given the Three Laws a utilitarian revision?
And who had made that possible?
Derec shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’ve taken care of the cyborg problem. It’ll be a long time before someone attempts it again.”
“That’s what they thought after the last one.”
“What do you want me to say, Ariel? Eventually it’ll be true. No one is going to just let cyborgs develop, and now that Gernika exists as a precedent, anyone who starts developing cyborgs is going to know that bombs will fall sooner rather than later.”
The destruction of Gernika and Nucleomorph had served another purpose, far from Nova Levis. The fact that a number of humans and Spacers had died in the raids provoked a furor even among the Managin segments of the Terran electorate, and their discontent was nothing co
mpared to the volcanic outrage coming from the Settled worlds at this ruthless exercise of authority. The Spacers, too, had made it clear that another unilateral action of similar nature would mean war, and a skirmish had broken out between Spacer and Terran ships around Kopernik. Faced with the tipping point into open slaughter, both sides had yet to blink. The mood on all of humanity’s planets was bleak and outraged.
The Gernika massacre was generally viewed as a sacrifice of lives on Nova Levis to make a political point on Earth, and nowhere was this feeling more loudly voiced than on Nova Levis itself. The Triangle was hunkered down, with President Chivu unlikely to survive and rumors swirling that he would take down a large number of the top legislative leadership with him. Street unrest was on the rise, and the attention of Earth and the Fifty Worlds was elsewhere.
Put another way: the horse was trying to rise.
“Will you come to the meeting, Derec?” Ariel asked.
Silence between them, with the rustle of leaves on the breeze, sounds of traffic and human voices on Nova Boulevard.
“I’ll come,” he said.
Chapter 38
PRESIDENT ERNO CHIVU’S speech to the combined legislative assembly of the Nova Levis government was scheduled to begin at precisely ten in the morning, one month to the day after the
“Terran incursion,” which was his preferred terminology. The speech was widely expected to answer his critics, who accused him of leaving the business of governance to a group of ideologically motivated advisers while he devoted himself to his business interests back on Earth — among which were a voting interest on the board of Kopernik Station and a seat on the shareholder council of Nucleomorph. A few loud voices hoped he would use the opportunity to resign and take the first shuttle off-planet.
The Gernika massacre had provoked a tremendous amount of investigative activity regarding the financial interests and political allegiances of Triangle leadership, and it was broadly assumed that the aftermath of the Terran strikes marked the beginning of journalism as a profession on Nova Levis. This was, of course, not welcomed by the parties under investigation, particularly when the activities of Vilios Kalienin and Eza Lamina came to represent the endemic corruption and malfeasance of Triangle elected officials — none of whom had really been elected by the people they were alleged to represent. That was the fundamental problem, and the cause of sporadic rioting in Stopol and Noresk. Disturbances in Nova City, at least inside the walls, were quelled with great speed and alarming efficiency, and President Chivu’s speech was to take place in a legislative chamber ringed by militia and local police.
Room L116 of the Triangle — known formally as the Combined Debate and Resolution Chamber, but colloquially as the Echo Chamber because of the perfunctory nature of legislative discourse under Chivu’s administration — seated one thousand people. Forty-nine desks formed a semi-circle around a dais reserved for committee arrangements or special speakers such as presidents; behind and above the speaking floor, two levels of raked public seating offered excellent views of the proceedings. On this day, the public areas were jammed, and the media presence — as measured by the number of drones flitting above the floor — was heavy. At the head of each aisle stood a pair of armed militia; other pairs stood at either end of the dais and at the outer edges of the semicircle of desks.
Near the leftmost aisle sat Derec, Ariel, and Hodder Feng. Mia Daventri fidgeted in her seat on the other side of the room, an empty seat between her and an oddly subdued Filoo. Periodically, a drone flitted up to Derec or Ariel, less often to Mia, not at all to Hodder or Filoo; but their presence at Chivu’s speech was unremarkable.
At precisely ten o’clock, the president appeared to stony silence from the public and dutiful applause from the assembled seventeen senators and thirty-two representatives, a sizable minority of whom had careers and already-tattered reputations riding on Chivu’s words.
At one minute after ten, the applause having faded even in the Echo Chamber’s excellent acoustic environment, President Chivu said, “Thank you.”
Immediately thereafter, Hodder Feng stood and, in a clear baritone, said, “I reject your authority to govern this people.”
A hushed murmur swept through the crowd, and security started to converge on Hodder, but members of the audience stood as they passed and with uncanny speed swept the weapons from their hands.
All through the auditorium, the security detail found themselves disarmed before they were aware that someone was approaching them — including on the debating floor, where a number of people seemed simply to appear, holding the captured weapons. The legislators scrambled to their feet, and the public erupted in a roar punctuated by a few screams that might have been cheers.
Weapons fire crackled from the balcony, and the figure nearest President Chivu buckled and fell. Then the upper portion of the audience swarmed over the shooter, and people started to scramble for the exits. Amid the swelling chaos, Feng strode across the floor to the dais and stepped up to the president. Chivu backed away, face pale with fear, and allowed his personal detail to guide him as far as the door through which he’d entered. There he stopped, faced with a single armed figure — a boy perhaps eleven years of age. The wounded man on the podium struggled to his feet and stood leaning against his nearest compatriot.
When Feng spoke again, his voice was amplified by overhead sound equipment, and his words rang out across the subetheric to Earth, the Fifty Worlds, and all the Settler colonies.
“The governed revoke their consent,” he said. “We declare this government failed in its obligations to represent the interests of the people of Nova Levis, and we hereby dissolve it.”
A moment of absolute silence hung over the assembly, and then a fierce roar of approval boomed from the audience, drowning out the stunned calls for order from some members of the legislature. It grew in intensity until the ears of every human in the chamber began to ring, but when Hodder raised his arms it subsided.
“Flanking me on this podium are the survivors of Gernika,” Hodder said. “Their crime was the will to live, and the willingness to take any action to survive. There are nineteen of them, where once there were more than two thousand. Look at them.”
Four women, three men, twelve children. As the eyes of the assembled public and the viewing audience across settled space fixed on them, they set down the weapons they had taken from security and stood erect and proud.
“Every one of you in the audience knows someone who died at Gernika,” Hodder said. “Too few of you, but still many, know one or more of these survivors. We reject the proposition that actions taken to save their lives could, at the same time, have robbed them of the humanity that is their birthright. We reject the idea that the people of Nova Levis are incapable of governing themselves and must be subjected to the whim of a corrupt and profiteering cabal of disgraced offworlders. And we deny the legitimacy of the Triangle and its agents throughout the incorporated cities and outposts of this planet. The people of Nova Levis were born free, and today demand the freedom until now denied them.
“From this moment forward, only adults born on Nova Levis or naturalized citizens may serve in the elected government or the judiciary. From this moment forward, the natural resources of Nova Levis and its moons are the property of its people. And from this moment forward, Nova Levis forbids the presence in its space, as defined by interplanetary common law, of any military unit except our own duly sworn armed forces. Violation of this prohibition will be considered an act of aggression subject to local and interplanetary sanction.
“President Chivu and members of the House and Senate, your positions are vacated and all associated privileges revoked. Criminal and civil proceedings will begin against any of you determined to have conducted yourselves in a manner unbecoming to your offices. If you wish, we will grant you amnesty in return for your immediate departure from Nova Levis and binding pledge never to return. Quitting the planet under these circumstances will entail relinquishing any re
al property or interest in same that does not physically accompany you at your departure.”
At this, a few shouts of outrage echoed through the chamber before being buried by an avalanche of cheers and catcalls. Hodder allowed things to die down again before going on.
“Beginning tomorrow morning, any citizen of Nova Levis is welcome to attend a public convention at which the details of a constitution will be formulated. The first task will be to designate a committee to write this document. Nominations will be accepted for the next seven days, and a caucus held during the week following.
“Also tomorrow morning, the first shuttle will be available for former elected officials and their staffs. The amnesty period will be seventy-two hours.”
Hodder stopped, and those closest to him could see that his eyes were shining with tears. “People of Nova Levis. As of right now, your destiny belongs to you,” he finished, and if he had said anything else it would have been lost in the overwhelming wave of sound.
People poured onto the floor, jostling the erstwhile legislators and pelting them with curses. A few fistfights broke out, and were broken up by the appearance of one of the Gernika survivors between the two combatants. The press of bodies carried the members of House and Senate out of the building before letting them go; President Chivu was allowed to leave with his personal security. People pressed around Hodder, bombarding him with proposals, theories, complaints, demands. Tomorrow, tomorrow, he told them until his voice gave out. Then he just shrugged and went outside to the plaza that lay between the Triangle and Nova Boulevard, where the first spontaneous street celebration in the history of Nova Levis was raucously underway.
Derec and Ariel joined in, with Mia and the laryngitic Hodder Feng, Filoo, and whoever came by with a bottle or an idea or both. It was a cool, fine fall day, and after a while they were both drunk and elated and it was a cool fall evening.
Eventually, Derec got to his feet. He caught Ariel’s eye and said, “Time to pay a visit.”