by Alex Lamb
‘Sir,’ said Ann. ‘We have to look to our strengths, surely. So far as we know, the Photurians haven’t attacked since New Panama.’
‘Because they don’t want to set fire to their own lunch,’ Ira growled.
‘Perhaps. But even that gives us something to work with. Hope isn’t lost.’
Ira sighed. ‘I’ll have to make a public address. This is the biggest, scariest pile of shit that anyone has ever been asked to clean up, and I want you there with me. You’re Will now. His shit job is your shit job. Do you get that?’
‘Of course, sir,’ she said. ‘I knew that from the moment he brought me back to life.’
‘Good, because you and I are about to become the public face of the largest and least popular relocation programme in the history of the human race. And it’s going to be grim. Even with all their overbuilding, our colonies are tiny. I have no fucking idea where we’ll find homes for so many people.’
[Actually,] said Ann’s shadow, [I may be able to help with that.]
22: STALEMATE
22.1: SAM
Sam didn’t complain or resist as they led him down the corridor. He knew he was on his way to see Ira Baron and that it would be the last conversation he’d ever have. He didn’t let it touch him.
They’d mined all the knowledge they wanted out of him with neural taps weeks ago. Not that he’d held anything back when they asked. There would have been no point. He’d felt curiously numb since they brought him out of the Gulliver’s med-bay. So much that he’d worked for had fallen away since Carter. He’d made so many compromises already that what was left of his life didn’t matter to him much.
Only one thing held his attention these days, and that was following the news-feed they allowed him about the Nems and their activities. He watched it avidly, like a boy transfixed by a spider, without feeling satisfaction, fear or dismay. If he had one regret about death, it would be going out not knowing how the story finished – not knowing what the Nems were up to.
They led him to an interrogation room. Ira sat there on a plain plastic chair, bent forward and brooding. He drummed his fingers on the table and didn’t look up. They pushed Sam into the seat opposite him, not bothering with restraints. They had far more effective tools for ensuring compliance these days.
‘Hi,’ said Sam.
Ira fixed him with a furious stare. ‘Tell me why you did it.’
Sam blinked slowly. ‘Because you were fucking it all up,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’ve told your people already.’
‘I know,’ said Ira. ‘I want to hear it from your own lips.’
‘I was trying to make a difference,’ said Sam. ‘All that shit in your speeches about balance, about trying to include all parties in the future – did you ever really buy that crap? Somebody had to do something. We were headed for war.’
‘And this is your solution. This fabulous fucking new world?’
‘No. This is a disaster. I used what I had to try to fix society and I backed the wrong horse. But at least I had a go, rather than sitting there on my ass playing everyone off against each other.’
Ira sighed. ‘How did I ever promote a half-witted clown like you to such a position of power? Do you honestly believe I didn’t consider options like the one you’re still so in love with? Of course I did. I discarded them because they were pitiful. An interstellar community with a dead Earth would have been a pathetic, emasculated thing.’
‘Except that’s what we’ve got now, isn’t it?’ said Sam. ‘So in a way, I won, didn’t I? You’re going to have to take Earth apart. Scatter the population.’
Ira glared at him and for a moment Sam thought that maybe he’d successfully slid a knife in. Then Ira laughed and broke the illusion.
‘You call that winning, you dumb fuck? The population of every single colony world is going to be drowned in Earther immigrants inside six months. There won’t be a single place left in space for your kind of society. It’ll be Earth everywhere.’
‘And are you proud of that?’ said Sam. ‘It’ll be the end of Galatea, too.’
‘I don’t give a shit what happens to Galatea so long as I keep the human race going. You appear to have forgotten, Sam, that Galatea’s only ever really been about one thing: survival.’
Sam rubbed his head. They’d shaved it for the neural probes. The stubble felt rough under his fingertips.
‘Look. I know I’m not getting off this station alive,’ he said, ‘so I’ll make my parting words very clear. We both know why you’re in this situation.’
‘Oh, really?’ Ira drawled. ‘Do tell.’
‘Because we failed as a species. Your administration failed. Transcendism failed.’
Sam saw Ira’s face harden and knew that this time he’d got him.
‘We failed for a very simple reason: idealism. You can’t hope the human race into maturity or good behaviour. People have been trying that for hundreds – no, thousands of years. Human beings don’t work that way. People respond to incentives, which means that everyone was going to carry on doing exactly what they wanted while you preached at them. If I hadn’t screwed up, it would have been somebody else. We had a choice: either the Transcended turned out the lights or we burned ourselves up without them. One way or the other. You saw it happening just as well as I did.
‘So when you leave me here, take just one idea with you. People like to imagine that civilisation is what happens when you give everyone the freedom to act on their own terms. That’s bullshit. Feudalism is what happens when you do that. Civilisation is a response to crisis. If you don’t give people a reason to have high standards, some of them will behave like shits. And those who do that will fuck it up for everyone else. Whatever you build next, remember that. Let the scumbags do what they like and you can kiss your species goodbye. It’s that simple.’
Ira smiled. ‘Do you know what I see? I see a sad little sociopath peddling his ideology because he imagines it might live on even though he’s not going to.’
Sam frowned.
‘I didn’t see you properly before because I wasn’t paying close enough attention,’ said Ira. ‘Now I am. Here’s how you work. You sit there like a fucking spider, waiting and watching for people to reveal a vulnerability. If you don’t see one, you guess and pick at them until one shows up. And then, once you’ve found a weakness, you work at it, pressing on that person’s system of self-validation until you’ve squeezed an idea under their skin. You make it so that they have to accept your bullshit in order to keep feeling good about themselves. Then you set them off like little clockwork robots and feel proud of yourself for it. And that, pathetically, is how you validate your actions.
‘You see, Sam, you think you’re clever because you were modded for strategy and negotiation. But I see people like you all the fucking time and they’re all dumb as rocks, just like you. All sociopaths are. You can’t see the futility of your own schemes because you lack even the first whit of personal insight into your own condition. But your kind don’t win any more, because there are people like me who have mods for looking straight through people like you.
‘Which is good news, really. People like you are always sad and angry inside. That’s because they lack the empathy that would actually allow them to be happy. So instead, your kind just go on collecting money or power or influence, or whatever meaningless crap it is that they’re using as a proxy for joy. And the whole time they keep wondering why they still feel sad and angry and alone. And you do feel lonely, don’t you, Sam? I know you do.’
Ira peered into his prisoner’s eyes, tilting his head this way and that. Sam held his gaze, forcing Ira to blink first. So Ira blinked at him with cartoonish enthusiasm and grinned.
‘Made you blink last,’ he said. He leaned back. ‘There’s an irony in your vision, Sam,’ he said, ‘because one of the badly behaved little shits whose uncivilised behavio
ur you despise so much is you.’
‘You think I don’t see that?’ Sam said tersely.
‘Oh, I’m sure you do, but you imagine a warped kind of justice in it. Everyone else is misbehaving so you might as well, too, but for a good cause. You see your entire self-serving edifice as a kind of sacrifice. The world might not understand your greatness but they’ll benefit from it even if you’re not there.’
Ira let out a cough of grim laughter. ‘That attitude would be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic. You’re like that guy on Drexler who put poison in the water supply to get rid of all the Truists and ended up poisoning his own kids. At least that clown had the capacity for regret. I don’t see that in you. So here’s how it will go. I’ll be ignoring your advice. Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because it comes from you. You’ve lied enough that you don’t deserve to have influence. You’ll go down in history as an example of why people should think twice about over-modding their kids, Sam. I’ll make sure of that. Push them too hard and you might end up with a fuck-up joke like Sam Shah.
‘You see, there’s not much I can do to hurt you, Sam, because there’s about as much humanity in you as there is in one of those machines you woke. So I’m not going to bother. You’re just going to die. I came here to look you in the eye for my own satisfaction, to see you for what you are and to be able to dismiss your relevance fairly. I wanted to let you know, before we finished you, that someone saw all the way through your bullshit and out the other side, and didn’t find anything interesting or wise in there.’
Ira got up to leave. ‘Congratulations on being a second-rate failure, Sam Shah. Enjoy your firing squad.’
Sam found himself breathing heavily. His knuckles were white, which surprised him, because he still didn’t particularly feel anything. He squeezed his eyes shut. Behind his eyelids there was only darkness.
22.2: ANN
Ann walked up to the podium beside Ira and stood there to his right while he readied himself to speak. The camerabot hovered patiently in front of them, its ready-light winking.
[I’m sorry,] said Ann’s shadow silently.
[For what?]
[For this. This is what happens. Become a super-person and you immediately get sucked into government.]
[I don’t mind,] said Ann. [There’s work to do.]
[Neither did I at first,] said her shadow. [Just wait.]
Ira looked up into the lens. ‘People of the human worlds, I am here today to announce a public emergency. Humanity is faced with a terrible threat. The entities calling themselves Photurians have made their objectives clear. They intend to co-opt and subvert the human race to remake us in their own image. We cannot allow this to happen. For that reason, the civilian governments of all IPSO worlds are hereby suspended. The human race has been put on a war footing and will remain so until we are certain that the threat has been neutralised.’
In fact, moving to a war footing had proved far easier than it would have been before the Nems. Earth’s Leading class had paid the heaviest price during what they were now calling The Harvesting. Those family members who’d been spared were only too willing to throw their support behind the Fleet, just as Sam would have expected. They’d been very vocal in the senate in calling for a retaliatory strike. Nobody talked about independent colonies any more, not even as a joke.
‘We are doing this because every human world is at risk,’ said Ira. ‘Earth is vulnerable because it is too populous and too important. In its current state, we simply cannot risk it being taken. Similarly, our colonies are in danger because they are too sparsely populated and under-resourced. Using new technology we have taken from the Photurians, we will be addressing this imbalance. All the colonies will be bolstered and defended. And every person who has signed up for a ticket to leave Earth will be doing so shortly.’
Ira didn’t go into the details, of course. Many of them wouldn’t be popular. Whole cities full of people were slated to be ferried to the colonies using the human race’s only carrier – a dangerous piece of alien technology they barely understood. Once they got there, many of them would end up living in Snakepit-style accommodation before too long.
Will’s parting contribution to the human race, apparently, had been a blueprint for a simplified form of self-stabilising tunnel habitat like the ones on the planet that had swallowed him. He’d woven it into Ann’s DNA along with everything else. Their version wouldn’t be as smart or robust as the Photurian version, but it would grow a hell of a lot faster, which was what they needed right now. What conventional industrial resources they had would be required by the war effort. A programme to convert smart-blood from the Ariel Two into the raw material they’d need was already underway.
Ira’s voice took on a hard edge. ‘Our exodus will be made rapidly,’ he said, ‘and in a non-denominational fashion. This will be unpopular with many. Colony populations will soar. Earth will be all but emptied. And while we will respect the needs of families to stay together, religious or cultural affiliations will not be respected. Roles will be assigned based on military need alone. This transition will be difficult for many. But it is essential.
‘The alternative is for us to give ourselves over to an alien menace and say goodbye to our humanity. I ask each and every one of you for your cooperation in this joint act. Mankind will need to act together as never before. There is no room for a Frontier Protection Party in this new reality, or a Truist Revival. Our differences must and will be put aside. In return, I will make sure that everyone is clothed and fed. Your quality of life will be as good as the IPSO can make it. I wish you all the very best of luck. I will be with you every step of the way.’
The camera light died. There was no piped applause from the video feed and no cheering. This was not that kind of address.
Ira turned to Ann. ‘You know what you have to do.’
She nodded. Her duty lay back at Snakepit, presuming she could reach it. Her mission was clear: rescue Will or torch the planet if she couldn’t. Citra Chesterford had volunteered to go with her as a bioweapons consultant. After downloading Mark’s memories, Ann had been surprised at first that Citra wanted to get back out there. According to Ira, she’d been the first to offer.
Ann thought she understood how Citra was feeling. All of them who’d fallen under Sam’s spell shared a similar kind of shame. There was a stain on them that would never wash away. It had plagued Ann every night until she begged her shadow to push her into unconsciousness. But beside that pain, a new feeling had grown over the last few days – a green shoot of purpose. She might have been a part of the problem, but now she could be an even bigger piece of the solution. Redemption lay in her freedom to act.
For Venetia Sharp, by contrast, that redemption apparently lay at home. She’d agreed to head up Ira’s social engineering team for the new fortified colonies they were building. What the two of them were planning, neither of them would say.
‘Take care of Will,’ Ira said softly. ‘I’ve been trying to do that for most of my life. It’s your job now.’
‘I will,’ said Ann.
Unexpectedly, he hugged her.
‘Now get out of here before I start crying,’ he said. ‘And bring that miserable fucker back to me in one piece.’
22.3: MARK
Mark and Zoe sat together in the Gulliver’s lounge watching the carrier loading around them. Their cargo this time was the same as it had been a month ago: battleships, construction equipment and entire orbital habitats jammed full with people. This time, they’d been ordered to Wheeler, a colony close to New Panama desperately in need of defensive support. Within days of their arrival, Wheeler would have a higher population and better defences than New Panama boasted in its heyday.
Aboard one of the habitats, Mark noted, was the entire population of New York Tower Three, his former home. That realisation struck a curious nostalgic chord in him. All those people
who’d been a part of his life hung just twenty kilometres away from him and didn’t even know he was there. They’d sat in the same meetings with him, looked out at the same dead water and woken to the smell of the same badly filtered air. None of them would ever set eyes on the Hudson again.
What would happen to the members of groups like Shamokin Justice? he wondered. Would they agree to leave their underground warrens and come peacefully? He doubted it. So maybe they’d inherit the Earth after all. And what about the New Yorkers – would they get along with the famously sanctimonious Wheeler colonists? He winced at the thought.
‘Containment is complete,’ said Zoe. ‘We’re ready to spin up.’
She floated over to his couch and curled up next to him as close as zero-gee would allow. He put his arm around her and smelled her hair. He still felt uncertain about their relationship. He savoured it but couldn’t trust it to persist yet. It was a thing born of adversity. As the pressure of events slowly subsided, would she still want to be with him?
He hoped so. When he was with her, he didn’t feel alone any more. He felt understood and accepted for the first time in his life. And that was so intoxicating he couldn’t have helped falling in love with her if he’d tried. But there was more to it than that. In retrospect, he knew he’d fallen irreversibly for Zoe in that moment outside of Britehaven when she’d shut down Sam’s plan from the cabin of the constructorbot. Her intelligence had been fierce and bright. Her rage had matched his perfectly. In the wake of the penitence boxes they weren’t likely to be a good fit for anyone but each other. And that suited him fine.
‘Do you think it’ll work – moving people around like this?’ he said.
‘I think it’s what we’re supposed to do,’ she replied, snuggling closer.