by Wil McCarthy
If the strike team had intended the mere destruction of Newhope, they needn't have visited in person. Any bomb or missile or long-range energy weapon would have served, although to be fair, Newhope was reported to have survived at least one space battle. She was a tough old ship. At any rate, whatever plans the boarding party might have had fell apart moments after their debarkation, when the fax machine on Newhope's docking cradle flickered to life and expelled both a platoon of vacuum-capable SWAT robots and a trio of human commanders.
This much should be said in favor of the Queendom authorities: they had little success in tracking or isolating or even comprehending the Fatalist organization, but they were masters of pattern recognition, and knew a tempting target when they saw one. The platform was a light-hour and more from the nearest naval or Constabulary outpost, and so would have had to wait two hours for a response to any distress signals it might have raised. But the docking cradle itself was intelligent and primed for trouble, as was the starship within it, and the troopers, along with other weapons, had been pre-positioned in its fax buffers and instantiated at the first sign of disruption.
In his deposition, Constabulary Captain Cheng Shiao said of the encounter, “Upon exiting the fax I established my bearings and took measure of the alleged intruders, of whom there were ten, clad not in stealth or inviz but simple optical black. On the citizens' frequencies I pronounced them under arrest on suspicion of trespassing and read them their rights, which proved to be a formality when they opened fire with mass projectors. This was not unexpected, and although our armor was struck by multiple projectiles—five-gram impervium wirebombs accelerated to several hundred meters per second—the attackers' aim was such that no serious damage was inflicted at that point. Our suits were not breached, and the SWAT robots were not disturbed from their duties.”
In the recorded testimony, Shiao sits very straight in his chair. His expression is placid, as though he finds his own story interesting but not upsetting. The other voice belongs to Hack Friesland, the Kuiper Belt district attorney, not visible in the frame.
“Did you fire back?”
“No, sir. I issued an order that the attackers were to be taken alive at all costs, on account of their distinctive nature. Observing two of them at close range, I noted that beneath the helmet domes their heads were hairless and earless and very pale, with two apelike nostrils taking the place of a normal human nose. Their eyes were gray and somewhat oversized. There is no direct evidence linking this attack with any known group, but these features are typical of suspected Fatalist operatives, who are believed to be disposable copies of the actual organization members, downloaded into physically and genetically identical bodies to baffle our investigators. The popular term for these avatars is ‘ghoul.'”
“We're aware of the terminology,” says Friesland. “But how did you expect to capture one?”
Shiao's testimony continues, “The attackers' weapons were recoilless, sir, but as the projectiles obviously were not, we were forced to rocket ourselves upstream through a hail of them. We did succeed in overpowering nine of the attackers, although under the effects of sustained fire, four troopers and both of my sergeants were disabled. I later learned that they were killed. However, the nine attackers were in fact restrained.”
“But not arrested.”
“No, sir. At this point, a voice on the citizens' frequency cut in, shouting, ‘All hands abort! Abort!' And the faces of the attackers I could see fell immediately slack. There is a particular look on a human face, sir, when the animating consciousness behind it is erased. The lights go out, so to speak; there's nothing ambiguous about it. Later scans showed that these individuals' brains, skulls, and even their spinal columns and stomach nerves had been subjected to a complete quantum wipe. Similarly, all information in the bricks they carried was summarily destroyed.
“Our sensors can be quite astute, and some small fraction of these data were eventually reconstructed in spite of the attackers' best efforts. We know, for example, that one of the attackers ate tea cakes on at least one occasion. Unfortunately, very little was uncovered that proved useful to our investigation.”
“I'm sure the physical damage to the evidence didn't help?”
“An excellent point, sir. With the engagement apparently over, we would have called fresh robots from the fax, shipped the bodies to a Constabulary lab for immediate analysis, and moved in to search the suspect vessel on probable cause. That would be standard procedure. However, the vessel's fusion reactor initiated a cascade overload, resulting in a kiloton-class explosion which scattered the physical evidence, obliterating some of it beyond hope of reconstruction. Newhope itself had grown the proper shielding, and was minimally damaged. I did not know any of this at the time, but I suspected it, as my helmet dome went superreflective and I was aware of a sharp physical impulse, very much like striking the ground after a fall. I felt my body tumbling, and when it was recovered six hours later, the autopsy revealed I had died shortly thereafter, from a combination of blunt trauma and gamma ionization. I recommended myself for disciplinary action, sir, but was refused.”
“That's in the record, yes. Do you have any regrets about the encounter?”
“Many. Most notably, the skeletal figure was not apprehended during the scuffle, and no trace of it could be found afterward. This, too, is typical of our encounters with presumed Fatalists. We have yet to develop an effective tactic for arresting them.”
When asked what he did with the Medal of Conduct he'd won for his heroism, Captain Shiao replied, “It's against regulations, sir, to wear such adornments on duty, or to wear them at any time on a garment other than a Constabulary uniform. There is one that I sometimes bring with me to state functions; this particular medal I placed in a locker with the others for safekeeping. It's a great honor to serve the Queendom in this way, for the Fatalists are breaking the law. The awards themselves are of secondary importance.”
And when asked if he expected to die himself someday, Shiao frowned in thought before answering, “Permanently? Irretrievably? That would be a gross dereliction of my duties, sir. Unless a qualified replacement were found ahead of time, I should do my best to remain alive. However, if it happened that my services were no longer required, I suppose I'd consider terminating my life voluntarily, as an act of community.”
In response to this remark, Shiao's wife Vivian, the beloved Director of the Constabulary, is reported to have offered a colorful rebuttal which history, alas, does not record.
chapter five
in which innocents are imperiled
The doctor, Angela Proud Rumson, turned out to be only the first of a tag team of nonthreatening female civil servants paraded through Conrad's room. There was P.J. the environmental technician—who thoughtfully interrogated him about the conditions of his “native” Planet Two. Was the light too bright for him here? Would he prefer a chlorine atmosphere?
“It was called ‘Sorrow,'” Conrad told her, “and I wasn't born there. I'm from Ireland, originally.”
“Oh, how nice,” she said, sounding surprised.
“It wasn't that much dimmer than Earth, just . . . yellower. And the chlorine was never more than a trace gas.”
Again, surprise. “Fatal concentrations, I thought.”
He shrugged. “To a regular human lung, sure, but it's a minor biomod. I barely noticed it after the first couple years. The biggest difference between P2 and Earth is the length of the day; P2's is a lot longer. And that's not something a sane person would miss.”
And when P.J. was gone there was Lilly the nurse, and then Anne Inclose Ytterba, who was apparently some sort of famous historian.
“You want to know about life in the colonies?” he asked.
“Very much so,” she said, “but I've been asked to hold that conversation for another time. Right now I'm here to brief you on the past thousand years.”
Which turned out to be a really short conversation; the population of Sol had quadrupled, a
nd nine of the thirteen colonies had gone offline and were presumed extinct. Nothing else of any real import had happened.
“We lost contact with Barnard in Q987—three hundred and three years ago. The circumstances were curious; there had been talk of a budget crisis, and then a cemetery crisis. No details were offered, and in your King Bascal's final announcement no mention was made of them. The next message—the colony's last—was from something called the ‘Swivel Committee for Home Justice' announcing that King Bascal had abdicated his throne, and that the Instelnet transceivers were being temporarily shut down to conserve energy. This occurred on schedule, and no further transmissions have been received from Barnard since that time.”
“So they might still be alive?” Conrad asked, reeling under the news. He'd been born into a world without death, and the grim toll of life on Sorrow had never seemed normal to him. It was, fundamentally, the reason he'd braved the rubble-strewn starlanes once again: to bring thousands of children to a place where “dead” was a medical condition rather than the end of a universe.
“They might,” she agreed, “although the so-called budget crisis was really more of a food crisis. The population had just passed the one million mark, but the fax economy was declining asymptotically to zero, and agricultural production had not fully taken up the slack. Think of it as an energy shortage, if you prefer; insufficient conversion of sunlight into food.”
“The soil there was worthless,” Conrad said, with a tinge of bitterness. “Never enough metals. No matter how much organic mulch you throw down, plants just won't grow without trace metals. But you can synthesize food in a factory, right?”
“And they did,” Anne agreed, “from air and ocean water and metals mined from the asteroid belt. But all that takes energy, too. Sunlight and deutrelium, and the technology to exploit them. To function smoothly, Barnard's economy needed more people than it had the resources to support.”
“So they died.”
“The ones you knew, yes, very probably. I'm sorry. At the time of last contact, the average lifespan of a Kingdom citizen was just a hundred and ten years.”
“Jesus,” Conrad said. He had socks older than that.
“Still,” she offered, “Sorrow's air is breathable. There's water to drink, and some vegetation. It just grows slowly. By most estimates, using nothing but human labor the planet should support roughly one person for every twenty fertile acres. And it's a big planet, right? There's no telling what's happened up there, but I'd be astonished if there weren't someone still alive. Possibly hundreds of thousands of someones—the great-grandchildren of the people you knew and loved. They may even be happy.”
“Hooray,” Conrad said, managing in his distress to make an insult of it. The world you've left behind is gone. Everyone you know is dead.
Anne didn't appear offended, but the interview was over; she began the process of gathering her things. “I don't blame you for being upset, Mr. Mursk. I'm sure I would be. But most colonies aren't as lucky. At Ross and Sirius and Luyten, they didn't have the cushion of a habitable planet to fall back on. When their economies failed, the air trade failed with them, and most of the communities died out within a year. Maybe someday we'll travel there, to find vacuum-preserved corpses by the hundreds of millions. A field day for people like me, I'm sure, but nothing alive. Nothing contemporary.”
“Nothing decomposed,” Conrad said. “You could just wake them all up.”
“Except for the radiation damage,” she answered. “The way I hear it, you were barely recoverable yourself. If we left right now to rescue them, those people might have a chance.”
“But the Queendom of Sol has its own problems,” he finished for her, “and isn't going anywhere.”
“Unfortunately, yes. But consider this: you got out, along with thousands of your countrymen. And in light of recent events, there's little doubt they'll be revived. If the Fatalists hate you that much, most people will find some reason to love you.”
“What recent events?” Conrad asked, not liking the sound of that. “What Fatalists?”
Anne Inclose Ytterba, already stepping through the doorway, turned to offer him a look of sudden sympathy. Now she felt sorry for him. “Didn't you hear? You're all the targets of a secret society's deathmark. It seems you're emblematic of everything they've ever struggled against, and they want you expunged.”
“Really?” Conrad wasn't exactly a stranger to conflict; he'd shot his way out of Barnard, and before that he'd been in the Revolt. If people would just be nice, just look out for each other and share the wealth along with the problems, he'd've lived long and peacefully without complaint. Hell, if life were short he'd've been happy enough to take over his father's paving business in Cork, living and dying in the county of his birth. But rare indeed was a century without conflict, and this far-wandering Conrad Mursk had already slogged his way through the darkest hours of more than one. Shamefully, he held himself responsible for dozens of deaths—many of them permanent.
But his enemies, numerous though they were, didn't usually take the trouble to swear out a formal deathmark. That was something one expected of Old Modern robber barons, or cartoon characters. The illegality of it paled in comparison to its sheer absurdity. They want to do what?
“We just got here,” he said to her, a bit defensively. “What could we possibly have done?”
And here Anne the historian cocked her head and laughed a strange little laugh. “You're breathing the air, Mr. Mursk. Tsk tsk.”
After that charming encounter, Conrad enjoyed a few hours of darkness and sleep, and then another visit from still another civil servant: Sandra Wong the social worker.
“Look,” he told her, before she'd had a chance to say very much, “I just want to get out of here. I want to see my wife.” He was standing at the window, peering out through the frost and into the polar darkness. Except for the faint, shining curtains of aurora australis hanging over the wellstone lights of Victoria Land, it looked just like the view from Newhope's observation lounge. The same damned stars, a bit less vivid. He hadn't seen a sky in hundreds of years, but it was winter here; dry and cloudless. The sun wouldn't be up for months.
“I understand—” Sandra began.
“I'm not sure you do,” he said, turning to glare at her. “We were in a terrible accident. We had to freeze ourselves, without any guarantee we'd ever be revived, and I haven't seen her since. You people have been kind, and you offer every assurance that she's fine, just fine. But since when is that a substitute for . . . for . . .”
“Warm flesh and a smile?” Sandra asked, looking down at her sketchplate and nodding. “I'm your last visitor, Mr. Mursk, and my job is to process you back into Queendom society. Technically speaking, you're still a prisoner.”
“Eh?”
“For your role in the Children's Revolt. You were banished, yes?”
“Oh, that. Yes.” It seemed such a long time ago. But these people were immorbid, and forgot nothing. Time passed for them like a kind of dream, a river without end.
“As your caseworker, I've filed a temporary motion to reinstate your citizenship with full privileges. This means, among other things, that you're entitled to draw Basic Assistance. It's not much, but it should get you on your feet until you're able to find employment. What's your area of specialty?”
“Uh,” Conrad answered brilliantly. Specialty? He'd kicked around from one profession to the next, mastering few tangible skills. Life in the colonies was like that; there was always more work to do than there were people to do it, and no one was really qualified. You just grabbed urgent-looking tasks and did them, and then you grabbed some more, and just kept on like that. Until you died. But how could he explain that to someone like Sandra, who'd probably had fifty years of schooling before her first lowly apprenticeship?
“Architect,” he finally said, for lack of anything better to attach his name to. He'd been First Architect of the Kingdom of Barnard, for whatever that was worth. A laugh, her
e, probably.
Indeed, Sandra's expression was primly amused. “Architecture is a field, sir. I need a specialty.”
“You need one?”
“Every citizen needs one. If nothing else, it may win you Appreciator status, which would boost your assistance level.”
Conrad frowned. “You mean I'd be paid to walk around admiring buildings?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Would I have to write anything?”
Again, that flicker of amusement. Sandra was trying not to smirk, not to condescend; she seemed like a nice person, and certainly her profession was one of understanding and tolerance. But Conrad was just too damned ridiculous: not just a refugee but a bumpkin, from a place so backward it had collapsed and died in its own filth, without building so much as a teleportation grid. Architect, indeed.
“Sir, that would make you a Reviewer. I'm not sure you've got the background for that.”
Ouch. “Hmm. No, I don't suppose I do. I became a revolutionary because there was nothing else for me here. All the good jobs were filled with people too competent to ever leave them. And that was a long time ago. Today, I'm a thousand years more foolish!”
A faint smile acknowledged the joke, but then she said, “There's nothing wrong with being an Appreciator, sir. It's honest work. Most people don't have the eye for it.”
“Hmm. Well. I suppose I'm flattered, then.”
“I do need to put something down for your specialty. Shall we say, residential architecture?”
“Oh, I've done residential,” Conrad said. “Single- and multifamily. Also industrial, civic, monumental, and certain infrastructure projects, including roads and tuberails. But lots of people were doing that. The only specialty I can claim is in transatmospherics. I once built an orbital tower a thousand kilometers tall.”