Can I keep him talking? Potter thought. Will the others see, realize what's going on? "Did Miller know? Would he have killed Ike to keep it a secret?"
"Miller knew," Liu said. "Else why didn't he bring anything else back? As for killing Ike; well by the ounce, even by the pound in a one-planet economy, hafnium's not so valuable. But Miller's analysis markings say this stuff has twenty times the hafnium of terrestrial zirconium, and at an already higher purity."
"How is that possible?" Potter asked, trying to sound interested in anything but Liu's weapon.
Liu shrugged. "Higher vulcanism on this moon, probably, along with the godawful tidal pressures from the gas giant's gravity. Who knows? Xeno-Geology was Miller's field, not mine. Step back, please, Emmett. You can see it just fine from where you are."
Potter nodded, then looked up at the Chief Engineer. "So. Which Company are you working for?"
Liu smiled ruefully. "The one that's going to make me a Vice President."
"You're going to kill me, then?"
"Jesus, Emmett, I'm not a barbarian. Let's just go home and collect the Survey bonus." Liu smiled warmly. "If I get the kind of deal I think I will, you can even have my share."
Potter ignored him, concentrating instead on the fact that, despite his chatty tone, Liu had not lowered his weapon. "Did you kill Miller?"
After a moment, Liu nodded. "Mm-hmm."
"And Connolly?"
"No. No need." Liu caught himself. "I mean there wasn't any reason for me to.
"And if there had been?"
Liu sighed. "Don't be difficult, Emmett. I can fly the Fast Eddie home without you, if need be."
"Six months is a long time to be alone."
"I'll pass the time calculating my interest-income statements on the ship's computer. He caught himself again. "Besides, Mike and Farrow will be along too."
He's going to kill us all. Potter finally had to admit it to himself. Liu's aim had not strayed a particle from the center of Potter's chest. Company board member or sole Survey bonus recipient; or both. Why share any of it?
With nothing to lose, Potter sighed and reached for the pistol.
Mike came running at the sound of the gunshots. He could see nothing, but he knew the difference between the reports of an accelerator rifle and a firearm; there weren't supposed to be any of the latter in the Fast Eddie's stores. Farrow raced down the ramp of the shuttle after him.
They passed under the craft to see Chief Engineer Liu and Captain Potter grappling in the snow, leaving a thin smear of reddened ice in their wake. Mike ran toward them, but his foot came down on something and his ankle twisted, throwing him off his feet. He hit the frozen ground hard and heard the gun go off again.
Mike looked to see that he had tripped on some white rock, and having no weapons he grabbed the stone and scrambled toward the men.
Chief Engineer Liu was pressing a gun against Captain Potter's stomach. Potter was already bleeding from two wounds, when Mike heard a third shot, this one muffled by the Captain's parka. Mike brought the rock down on Liu's skull, and the Engineer rolled off Potter's chest, stunned.
Liu hadn't dropped the gun, and seemed to be trying to regain his bearings, so Mike swung the rock with all his might against the Engineer's temple. The left side of Liu's forehead collapsed, his eyes rolled completely back, and he fell to the ground dead. Mike dropped the rock and went to Potter, lifting the Captain just as Farrow arrived.
"Emmett," Farrow whispered hoarsely. "Emmett, can you make it to the ship?"
Potter didn't answer; he was beginning to feel the cold through his parka, and tried to fumble for the coat's heat controls, but his hands wouldn't obey. "Rock," he said.
Mike and Farrow shared a look, and the Basque engineer gestured with a nod toward the stone he had used to kill Liu. The Fast Eddie's master quickly brought the rock to Potter.
Potter tried to push it away. "Liu was Company man. Precious ore. Mountains filled with it." He wanted to tell them to bury it, to throw it out the airlock from orbit; never to let the Companies or the CoDominium know it existed, but he was so tired; the fight with Liu had worn him out, and he was so cold. He needed to sleep, just for a little while.
Mike seemed to understand, though. Passing Potter's bulk to Farrow, Mike stood and put the zirconium ore on the ground, where the frozen marsh that comprised the landing zone had been softened by the morning's test-firing of the shuttle engines.
Mike put his boot over the bloody rock and pushed it beneath the gluey, crunching surface. After a moment, there was no sign it had ever been there.
Potter looked at the mountains in the distance, at the dark, fierce storm clouds, the first snowflakes beginning to fall.
No two alike, he thought. He closed his eyes.
"He was a good man," Mi'huelo said to Farrow.
Farrow nodded. "He was my friend, Eminence," Farrow said.
Mi'huelo looked back over his shoulder. "I wonder what that stone was?" The Basque spoke idly, but his tone was cultured, educated.
"I don't know, Eminence."
Mi'huelo shrugged. "No matter. If this-Company man-was interested in it, than all the more reason to deny his masters the chance to despoil another world."
He knelt to help Farrow pick up the body of Captain Emmett Potter, who although not a Harmony, had yet been an harmonious man. To the Harmonies, who sought to harmonize with all things, such a man was highly regarded; the Universe being ultimately in harmony, those few with the capacity to harmonize naturally were cherished as better parts of its Song. In that perfect song, the Universe sent to the faithful just such voices the faithful required to help them sing it.
And so, they believed, it had sent Emmett Potter, for he was the means through which Mi'huelo Costanza, Metropolitan of the First Church of the New Harmony, had been guided to this seemingly insignificant moon. For the Harmonites, too, had their secret scouts among the survey ships of the CoDominium.
Metropolitan Costanza now knew this seemingly insignificant moon could be made to resonate with that Harmony for which he and all the others of his order strove. Conditions on this harsh and unforgiving world would be a perfect place for the Harmonies to gather in solitude and security, for a little while, at least; for who else would want such a place? Metropolitan Costanza could see no reason for this place to stir greed among men, and here they might live in solitude, unmolested by the anthrocentric CoDominium, with its planet-raping Americans and their equally rapacious Soviet partners.
Metropolitan Costanza and Acolyte Farrow buried Captain Potter and First Officer Connolly next to Icaorius and Owens, who had been good, true friends; alongside Ike, who had also been a Harmony. The bodies of Liu and Miller they left for the ravens, or whatever their equivalents were on this world, to nurture any scavengers that might roam the skies of the new world, as those buried would nurture the scavengers that moved within the ground.
Then, preparing to leave, Mi'huelo turned for one last look at the land around them, now disappearing behind curtains of snow, falling faster by the moment.
"What did you say Owens called this place?" Mi'huelo asked Farrow.
Farrow thought a moment: "A garden spot, your Eminence."
Mi'heulo shook his head, smiling. "You see, Thomas? All things harmonize, if only we seek to accept them as part of the Song. Consider the four men buried there, and the two who lie exposed nearby. Theirs were lives claimed by this harsh world that might one day yet become a haven for we Harmonies."
"Creation willing," Farrow repeated, nodding. There was so much to understand, but he thought that perhaps today, he had just picked up one thread of one strain of the Music here.
"Remember," Mi'huelo went on, "as a part of the Song, this place may claim the lives of many more as it plays its part in that music." He put his arm across Farrow's shoulders. "The lives of men are only notes in that movement, and it is only the aggregate effect of those notes which may be fully apprehended. These six, Thomas, these six are the first
strains in the movement that contributes the story of this place to that song.
"The deaths of these men are the first blossoms of Spring in this world, their bodies the bone-white seeds, and their blood the bright-red blossoms of the ultimate Harmony, the attainment of which we can only seek, and whose real nature can be known only to itself.
"Kneel beside me, Thomas, and let us seek some small measure of that Harmony."
The steel floor of the airlock was cold against their knees, its hardness a further challenge to their concentration. No matter; counterpoint was important, too.
Each sought his own path for a few moments; Farrow was devoted to Costanza, and though many Harmonies found some of the Metropolitan's interpretations-unsettling-still, he was regarded as a voice of vision.
For himself, Costanza fretted constantly over the Harmonies; they needed so much care and tending to protect them. They were babes in the woods, and they did not understand that those woods were full of peril. The Harmony of existence was a song of many movements, many parts, and though all, by definition, harmonized, not all were pleasant to hear. And despite the order's belief in harmonizing one's self to circumstances and events, Costanza knew that every great orchestration needed conductors.
His own song was thus sometimes a lonely one. But he was grateful that he and Farrow had been caretakers of this garden where such seeds of Harmony had been sown.
"Let the blood of those who lie here nourish the seeds of the Song thus begun, and let such fruits flourish and multiply in measures everlasting."
. . flourish, and multiply. .
From Crofton's Encyclopedia of Contemporary History and Social Issues (2nd Edition):
Church of New Universal Harmony
The Church of New Universal Harmony espouses a kind of active pacifism that seeks always to "harmonize" with everything and everyone at all times. Such accommodations, conciliations, and compromises have rendered the Harmonies (also known, usually pejoratively, as Harmonites) vulnerable to many kinds of attacks over the years, but have also, somehow, managed to sustain at least the central core of beliefs embodied in their HARMONY WRITINGS, which include the Concordance of Referents and various attached holographic testaments, but very little, if any, actual ritual or dogma.
Although Harmonies are often called Peacemakers, it must be remembered that peace is not necessarily a harmonic of particular situations or circumstances. Although pacifist, the Harmony religion is not passive, and not without its inherent potential violence.
Garner "Bill" Castell, self-proclaimed wandering scholar, during his self-conducted trial for vagrancy in Austin, Texas, in the Old United States of North America, discovered that hoades of young people not only flocked to hear what he was saying, but offered him donations, services, and even devotion. His talks quickly took on the aura of revelation, and he apparently encouraged such feelings, at least tacitly. His Harmony ideas flourished, a meme gone wildfire, and soon his influence seeped into the secular arena as well. When he began structuring his talks into an avowed church, he found even wider acceptance. He quickly organized this outpouring of enthusiasm into an efficient fund-gathering organization, combining the best of both old style church tithing and contemporary business methods.
Castell was so good at this, that within a year of his trial for vagrancy, he purchased a plot of land on which he built the first building in what became the New Universal Harmony Complex, which covered four thousand acres of scrub-tree land in the hill country to the northwest of Austin. It is speculated that Castell, whose parents and origin are unknown, may have been a businessman who had earlier in his life walked away from a vastly successful corporation to "find himself," in period vernacular. Certainly his organizational skills matched his charisma in matters spiritual and philosophical.
Soon Castell's church exerted considerable social, and thus political, influence in the Southwest region of the old USNA. The church never abused its power, and was never seriously investigated or challenged by either regional or federal authorities. Unlike other cults, Castell's attempted to, as he put it, Harmonize with everyone and everything, and this attitude of compromise, conciliation, and comfort made his people quite welcome members of the majority of communities surrounding Austin at the time.
In other areas of the country, however, Harmonies met with considerable hostility and resistance, if not violence. Garner "Bill" Castell became a familiar figure in the halls of power, lobbying personally for toleration of his swelling flock and, as always, seeking a harmonious coexistence. It is noteworthy that this approach as often as not seemed to inflame the feelings of resentment, spite, and even outright hatred; Castell always quoted various philosophers when this happened, and the quotations usually dealt with the many flaws of human nature.
The Harmony First Prayer is as follows: "Be still as the silence/At the heart of the note/As it swells to fill the song." This is thought to mean that one should seek first to ascertain or understand, then respond to or harmonize with influences and forces in the world outside the mind.
Musical references abound in Harmony writing and thought. Zen influence is thought to be heavy, too, particularly in the lack of concrete dogma. Pythagorean concepts, such as the Golden Mean and The Music of The Spheres, are thought to affect Harmony thinking, along with such abstruse referents as the sciences of acoustics, quantum resonance, and fractal analysis of real-time object-events.
One might think of Harmony as a state of being, fragile or sturdy depending upon the individual weaknesses or strengths. One might also think of the Harmony religion as the human ad-libs required to maintain that state of being no matter what the world brings. This is perhaps the gist, although each Harmony sect tends to emphasize different elements in the seemingly myriad influences that contribute to the Harmony religion as a whole. The consistent element is the translation of the musical idea of harmony and harmonizing into real-world human events and actions.
In short, Harmony thinking has, as it were, "harmonized" diverse systems of thought, from science and philosophy as well as from many theologies. This somehow stable mix owes itself, it is thought, to the unschooled yet intense erudition of the church's founder, whose intellectual curiosity was apparently matched only by his spiritual longing for everyone and everything [to] get along in the same world, damned or divine may it or we be."
And then, in 2032, a planet later to be called Haven was discovered, and a few years later the acrimonious dispute over the new world's habitability exploded. When the lower court decisions favoring the Cal Tech/MIT University Consortium were overturned by a CoDominium Council in a closed session, it meant not only that CDSS Ranger Captain Jed Byers and his Science Officer Allan Wu had to be paid finders' fees for having found a habitable world, it also meant that such fees had to be paid within certain time limits.
Such fees are, literally, astronomical, so naturally the media followed the proceedings avidly. Also, so much fuss, and so many outrageous public claims were made during the various levels of litigation, that the whole thing played more like a holodrama than an actual lawsuit.
The CoDominium Council's word, however, was final, akin to the old-style Supreme Court decisions. And Cal Tech/MIT University Consortium was suddenly faced with having to pay out more money in one lump sum than they normally alloted for six months or more of operating budget. Worse, University trust fund officers refused to allow capital to be touched; the monies would have to be raised by outside means. And all this because the Consortium had officially set aside Byers' marginal moon, Haven, as "reserved for study", a vague classification many members of the lower courts had fought against for years as being too vague, too academic, and entirely too static.
"Study how?" Allan Wu said during one of many public appearances and press conferences. "They've got no people willing, or qualified, to throw away two years in round-trip travel and an unknown number of years on the ground studying the moon, so how can they study it?" And Jed Byers stepped in to add: "And if they
can be there all that time studying, then surely they've demonstrated our contention that we've discovered a habitable world, right?"
The Consortium tried to counter with arguments such as the following: "It is our considered opinion that several years at the minimum of programmed remote sensor scanning, mobile robot unit topographic mapping, spectroscopic atmospheric and geologic sampling and analysis, trial vegetable and animal survival experiments, biohazard controls, and other telemetrical exploration is necessary before the ultimate consensus opinion can be given as to whether this insignificant, far-flung chunk of rock is actually habitable in any way but by the most extreme, deep-space life-support system methods."
Into the fray stepped Garner "Bill" Castell. He made an offer to pay the finders' fees, as well as other, unspecified costs which were called, at the time, "good faith payments," a phrase now thought to have been a rather ironic pun masking other machinations having little to do with faith in any but the most venal sense.
Indeed, rumors surfaced that Consortium efforts to raise the required monies were being sabotaged by CoDominium Intelligence agents, although no specific allegations ever came to trial. Speculations also linked CoDominium Intelligence agents with Garner "Bill" Castell himself, whose past, after all, was not only a closed but a lost book.
And then members of Castell's own church began objecting to his actions.
Despite all this, in 2036 Haven was unilaterally declared habitable, and the very next year Garner "Bill" Castell bought the license to colonize the place he christened Haven. He died that same year, on the steps of his Fortress of Harmony in Austin, while having a shouting match with church members who charged him with having looted church coffers to finance a pie-in-the-sky promised land that only a chosen few might see.
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