“So it’s a pissing match?” asked Justin.
“Not quite.”
The small group of four had practically slowed to a crawl, and Mosh and Justin had to resort to light shoving just to try and make their way clear.
“The various corporations,” continued Mosh, “have been sending out more judges and security personnel to all the settlements, enforcing laws against personal versus corporate earnings, and enforcing division of resource laws that have been on the books for hundreds of years but have rarely, if ever, been enforced.”
“In short, dear,” added Eleanor, “they’re trying to get as many credits as possible and have been cracking down to do it.”
Justin smiled. He wasn’t at all worried about the crowd, and was far more interested in getting off the rock as soon as the swelling crowd would allow. “You’re telling me,” he asked, “that all these people are pissed off about having to pay their taxes?”
“A, sweetheart,” Neela answered, “ ‘pissed off’ is no longer part of the modern vernacular, and b, in answer to your question, yes. Only please don’t say the T word in public.”
Justin grinned. “I’ve missed being corrected.”
The crowd was now beginning to shout, and the tension was palpable.
“It’s more than . . . the T word,” shouted Mosh over the din, “it’s how it’s being collected.”
“Force?” asked Justin.
“In a way,” shouted Mosh, pointing to a sign a protestor was holding up that read NO PSYCHE AUDITS ON CERES!
“The Corps,” he continued, “have set up three new psyche-auditing facilities here. The Cereans believe it’s an attempt to scare them into submission.” Mosh suddenly stopped and pulled a DijAssist from his pocket. He’d been signaled. He reviewed the message as quickly as possible, not wishing to stop any longer than he had to. His face suddenly paled.
“The Chairman . . . is dead.”
Justin, too, looked ashen. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, absolutely positive?”
“Yes, Justin,” answered Mosh. “Quite. That’s good news for you, right?”
Justin didn’t have time to answer, and realized he had to act quickly. If The Chairman was dead, there was only one reason why, and only one person who could be responsible. They were now in real danger.
“We have to leave,” he said, desperately looking for a way out, wondering who in the crowd might be the enemy. Neela saw the look in his eyes and also felt fear.
“Justin,” asked Eleanor, sensing trouble, “what is it?”
Before he could answer a series of loud shrieks could be heard in the distance. The crowd was shoved aside by a squad of GCI security goons supported by a phalanx of well-armed securibots. The massive group of armor and sweat—some fifty soldiers and bots combined—stopped directly in front of Justin and his entourage. “Justin Cord,” shouted the lead SD in a voice loud enough for all to hear, “you and your accomplices are under arrest for gross violation of the shareholder information act.” He then held up his DijAssist. “I have in my hand a signed warrant from a local judge demanding that you be given an expedited psyche audit. You will all come with me . . . now!”
Justin was trapped, and the promise he’d made only moments ago to the love of his life was about to be broken.
After receiving the anonymous note, Omad had boosted into Ceres. His crew had also elected to come along. They weren’t the nicest bunch, but they were all loyal and with majorities in themselves. After a few days of revelry they were ready for something more. Signs for the demonstration were up everywhere, and it didn’t take much convincing to get them all involved. To a person they were upset about the corporation’s recent encroachment. “Things are just done a certain way out here,” one of them had tried to explain in a drunken stupor to Omad, “and I’ll be damned if some suit’s gonna start grabbin’ my extra dividends just so’s he can have a shot at supermajority!” There was no use in arguing. Omad knew his crew, and knew how much trouble they could get into. He elected to go along—either to keep them out of trouble or to join them in it.
Omad’s associative fame from Justin, and actual fame from his own exploits, made him a prime candidate to be “volunteered” into service as the key representative of the outer mining community. When the Cerean council wanted to know which way the miners might go on an issue, they came to him. When mining dignitaries felt they were being given short shrift, either via time onstage or in position of seating, they came to him. In short order, what started out as a babysitting gig turned into a full-time job—one that Omad started to realize he might actually be pretty good at.
It wasn’t until he’d arrived at the park on the day of the actual protest that Omad realized how much rage existed among the populace. The type of anger he was sensing wasn’t normally verbalized—at least, he thought, not until he could sit someone down and get ’em good and drunk. He was also beginning to wonder when, if at all, he would manage to connect with his friend. He didn’t have to wait long, as he was soon informed by one of his minions that Justin had been seen near the Singh Statue. He immediately began moving in that direction, and shortly thereafter arrived at the perimeter. When he finally shoved his way forward, it wasn’t what he saw that was so chilling; it was what he and the crowd surrounding him had heard: “expedited psyche audit.”
The dissonant rumblings of thousands of protestors quieted so quickly that the lone voice of a crying baby could be heard across the field.
Justin attempted to break free but was quickly overwhelmed by the guards. Neela instinctively leaped to his defense, and she, too, was subdued quickly. Mosh and Eleanor offered no resistance, convinced by this most recent demonstration of power that doing so would prove futile. The crowd stirred ominously but didn’t move—unsure of what to do next.
The SD, sensing the volatile nature of the situation, ordered his guards to train their weapons on the mob, and slowly begin to move the prisoners toward the psyche chambers.
Omad, too, stood motionless, and watched as his friends were carted away. It was at that moment that he remembered something someone had once said to him: “Sometimes history just happens, and sometimes it needs a good kick in the ass.”
It was all he needed to act. He jumped up onto the base of the Singh Statue and screamed at the top of his lungs words that were to begin the greatest revolution in human history: “If they can do it to Justin Cord, they can do it to anyone. Stop them!”
Omad then jumped from the statue and ran toward his friends with his crew following closely behind.
As Omad, in full stride, approached the phalanx that were manhandling his friends, a jittery security guard pulled the trigger on his neurolizer, sending an indiscriminate blast into the crowd. A small child went down, and as she did, the Cereans rose up and attacked en masse. Justin barely had time to acknowledge his friend before the melee occurred. The guards were subdued quickly and the securibots destroyed, most before they could get off a single shot. The crowd took losses, but all in all it was quick, it was bloody, and it was recorded for all the system to see.
In the immediate aftermath of the skirmish Justin managed to make his way toward his exhausted, bloody, but now visibly relieved friend.
“How many times,” asked Omad, wiping the dirt from his forehead, “am I gonna have to save your sorry ass? You know I’m not gettin’ any younger.”
Justin laughed and bear-hugged his liberator.
“As many times as I need, friend,” he answered, “as many times as I need.”
Mosh, Eleanor, and Neela—all of whom had also managed to make it through the skirmish with only minor cuts and bruises—joined up with Justin and Omad. After a few back slaps and hugs, Neela pulled Justin aside.
“Justin,” she said, concern in her eyes, “we need to talk . . . now.”
“What is it?” he asked, looking her over from head to toe. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine, Justin,” she answered, and then indicated the large c
rowd now gathering around them. “They’re not.”
Justin looked at her blankly.
“You need to talk to them, Justin. You need . . . to lead.”
He looked around. Then made a wider sweep. Indeed, all eyes were on him. People were whispering and waiting.
He looked back at Neela and took her hands into his.
“You realize, my love, once this starts, there’s no going back . . . for any of us.”
Neela nodded. Justin saw, too, that Omad, Mosh, and Eleanor had also acceded. He took a deep breath and thought about what he needed to say, what he’d been waiting to say. He realized at that very moment that the first life of Justin Cord had only been in preparation for this—his one and true destiny. He would lead these people and, come hell or high water, do everything within his power to save them.
“Then let’s do this thing,” he said to the four people he now considered the closest thing to family. “Let’s roll.”
Omad, his crew, and the willing hands of a few dozen people quickly assembled a makeshift dais from the various pieces of junk still littering the battlefield.
Justin climbed to the top and once again surveyed the assembly. What had started off in the tens of thousands had, in the brief period of the melee and its aftermath, swarmed to well over a million. The entire Smith thoroughfare was filled, as were all the available balconies and platforms. Where possible, people floated aloft. The mediabots, too, were out in full force, and for once Justin was not annoyed by their presence; he was emboldened by it.
They were all eerily silent and waiting.
Justin realized that of all the crowds he’d ever spoken to before, of all the speeches he’d ever given, this would be the one that mattered most.
“I know you’re worried,” he began, “and maybe even confused. Well, you should be. They tried to take something from you.” He could hear his voice skipping across the wide expanse of the park and onto the thoroughfare by way of a million-plus DijAssists. “You might not have known what it was, maybe you couldn’t put your finger on it, but you knew they were trying to take something away . . . something important. In each and every one of you something was screaming for its life and rasping its last breath and you knew, you knew, it was too precious to let die. And so you fought.”
“Many people,” he continued, “will say that you fought to free me from a bunch of security goons. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Justin shook his head derisively. “Maybe. But I’m not really that important.”
The crowd murmured its disagreement.
“But if this were only about me,” he continued, “you wouldn’t have fought. If this were only about me, you wouldn’t have risked your lives. And if this had only been about me,” he said, making sure to do a complete 360-degree turn before delivering his next salvo, “you would have lost.”
The murmurs suddenly diffused.
“This,” he continued, “was about you. You fought to free yourselves from the tyranny of those far away. Those who would take from you your birthright, who would take from you your destiny as free and independent human beings. These same people tell you that they own a part of you. And because they own this part of you they can control your future and the future of your children and your children’s children. They say they control the destiny of the human race and you have to accept your subjugation with a bow and silence.” Justin paused again, not only to gather his breath but also to let the tension build. “Well, today you said ‘no!’ ”
The cheers were deafening. Justin looked down from the dais at Neela, who had become lost in his words, too. He then looked back toward the demonstrators.
“Today you said your destiny is yours to make, your future is yours to take, and to hell with anyone who tries to take it from you!”
Wave after wave of cheering shook and echoed through the cavern in a sound never before heard in the history of Ceres.
“But be warned . . . they will not let this stand. I must tell you honestly that they will come for your freedom. They will come for your hopes and dreams. They will come for your future and for your very lives, because they cannot tolerate your . . . ,” said Justin, lowering his voice from a roar to a whisper, “freedom.”
Justin raised his arms up and wide. “Look . . . look at how they treated one free man. They certainly will not tolerate millions living with that very same freedom. They will come in all their fury to extinguish this spark of liberty made into flame. They will come with their ships and their nanites and, yes, their psyche booths to impose their slavery by force, now that they can no longer fool you into accepting it willingly. They will do that because they must. And mark my words . . .” Again Justin let the last phrase slip away through the thoroughfare. Only when he heard his voice stop ricocheting off the grand stone ceiling did he continue, “they will FAIL! They will fail because it’s too late. You are all already free!”
And then Justin heard what he’d been waiting for. What he’d been trying to coax from Cereans rather than prompting them. What he’d wanted to have emerge from the depths of their hearts.
“One free man, one free man, ONE FREE MAN!”
He allowed it to reach a crescendo, saying nothing, doing nothing, and then, with a sudden hammering of his fist onto the rail of the makeshift podium, he screamed at the top of his lungs, “Stop!”
The chant was shattered, the spirit diffused. Exactly as he’d wanted.
“Don’t you see,” he now pleaded, “that that is no longer true? That I am no longer the ‘one free man’? That I am no longer cursed by the truth of that terrible indictment? How horrible it was to see humanity so enslaved that there was only one free man. Well, let me tell you, freedom like that comes at too high a price. It was too lonely a prison, too heavy a sentence. I wept with the thought that if I was indeed the one free man, I might perhaps be the last free man.
“But you,” Justin continued, once again doing a complete circle in the limited space of the dais, “you all saved me. Not just from GCI, who would have stripped my mind and turned me into an automaton. You saved my hope. And you saved my soul. By your individual acts of courage and defiance this very day, you’ve freed me from the curse of the ‘one free man.’ I will say it again for all to hear and rejoice. I am no longer the one free man, because, as of this day forward, we are all free men. All free men, All Free Men, ALL FREE MEN!”
The roar grew to a crescendo, and the enormous cavern once again magnified and expanded the cry. Only this time it was heard not just within the confines of thoroughfares deep in the heart of Ceres, it was heard throughout the entire system. Justin stood tall, shoulders straight, head held high. As he watched the crowd sway, and heard the thunderous chant over and over again, he felt a tension release within himself that he’d never realized was there. At long last, Justin Cord was finally free.
Epilogue
Shortly thereafter, Ceres declared its independence. The next system to declare was the Oort Cloud observatory. In its declaration the new leader, Kirk Olmstead, called on all other enslaved peoples to throw off their chains. In addition to consulting with the leader of the revolution, Justin Cord, Acting Director Olmstead called for an outer systems congress to meet in Ceres to draft policies on trade, government, and mutual defense.
In quick succession over 90 percent of all the settlements from the asteroid belt out declared their independence, and began sending delegates to Ceres. On Earth there was massive rioting, put down ruthlessly. The Moon and Mars stayed impressively loyal to the corporate order.
Justin Cord had not been at all surprised by the scope and speed of the revolution. He was now the leader of a vast space-faring nation that stretched from the outer reaches of the solar system back to the asteroid belt.
Justin was sitting in his office reviewing trade policies when his new assistant entered the room and stood at attention, barely able to suppress her grin.
“Yes, Catolina,” he said, looking up from a large stack of papers. “What is it?”
<
br /> “Sir . . . I mean, Justin, the centaur state of Chiron has just declared for the revolution.”
“Excellent,” answered Justin. “With Chiron aboard, in six months the last of the outer settlements will declare for us.”
The weary leader then looked back down at his papers. It didn’t take him long to notice Catolina still fidgeting in place.
“Was there something else?”
“Well, um . . . yes.”
Justin indicated that she continue.
“Now that’s it’s all over,” said Catolina, “I mean, that we’re free and all . . . Well, what do we do now?”
With a smile strangely devoid of joy and mirth, and as cunning as that of a hungry wolf, Justin Cord gave her the answer.
“We stay that way.”
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1 Look What I Found
2 Wake-up Call
3 Walk About
4 Fame
5 First Trial
6 Open and Shut
7 Aftermath
8 Mardi Gras
9 The 5 Percent Solution
10 The Coming Storm
11 Second Trial
12 Rise
13 Fall
14 Temptation
15 The Chairman
16 Resolution
Epilogue
The Unincorporated Man Page 67