Revelation

by Nigel Foster

  * * *

  Before GalDiv got some control, the Gliese and other aliens swarmed over Earth with shiny tech to trade. The Gliese had star drives and people knew about the trade.

  On a fine spring morning in Roswell – before it was swallowed by the Albuquerque City State – a group of Retros traded thirty terminally ill volunteers for a mega-powerful sideslip-field generator and anti-grav unit. The volunteers knew they were going to be cured. The Retros hoped they were.

  The idea was to go there, and not come back for a long while. Any space voyaging would be done in and around their new home. Unless there was uncool or even a bummer, in which case somewhere else would beckon. The spaceship – this was before they were called space utility transports – was a former cruise liner, a real ship with a promenade deck, three pools, twelve bars and memories of quick, cheating sex because out of sight of land means yes, you can.

  Their supplies contained seeds of opium poppies, marijuana, coca, the spores of every hallucinogenic mushroom and a medical lab that could produce acid, meth and weapons-grade heroin. There were real chemists, doctors, nurses and people who knew precisely how to handle a bad trip. Also sparkies, chippies, builders, farmers and a few mellowed-out former US Marines searching for Nirvana because okay, this was about peace and harmony but it’s good to be careful out there.

  Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed to a new home, they sang as the Grow Your Own creaked into the sky, Flying Mother Nature’s silver seed to a new home in the sun. They even had a Neil Young hologram.

  Deadhead was the first planet they found. They had no idea how far they were from Earth. The pilgrims arrived there because while the aim was Polaris, the new navigator got confused. He later claimed the universe had been calling to him. They settled down to breed because that’s how colonists survive. Little or no problem with infant mortality, no weird diseases or vicious creatures. The population increased by half every ten years, women first giving birth in their late teens, early twenties. Life was one big happy commune.

  Deadhead was perfect: a warm and friendly sun, oceans, snow-capped mountains, drinkable water, weird but not dangerous flora and fauna. It seemed to welcome the plants and people that appeared one day from Earth.

  A few months after their arrival various types of alien showed up.

  Some looked like thistledown; others resembled rolling warty balls, snakes with hands, even floating Portuguese Men o’War propelled by farting (how it sounded, luckily no discernible smell); a swarm of the most delicate dragonfly-like insects the size of seagulls that danced at dusk and dawn. The neighbours were coming to say hi.

  Communication was impossible. The colonists had suspected it would be and weren’t fussed.

  Mostly the aliens hung around watching. A biker from Oakland tried tagging one of the rolling warty balls, only to swear loudly when it stung his left hand, which fell off the next day. A clean separation as if by laser, no other ill effects, perfectly healed, but henceforth tagging was out. A month later a replacement hand began to grow from the shiny stub. Except it was a new right hand and the biker already had one.

  Aliens? You can look but best not to touch.

  It’s to be remembered that these colonists were used to fantasising about seriously strange shit, either stoned or straight. There was very little the universe could throw at them that would invoke the kind of screaming disbelief for which insanity is the only comfort.

  As time went by, several colonists found they could sense a mental road map that led to valuable alien trade. As in seeing, somehow, what goods an alien would want in order for colonists to get... well, the ultra-cool yellow metal cubes that enabled people to get inside each other’s heads, to share emotion and perception. Or like a spookily fast-growing tree with fruit that when cooked tasted and smelt just like meat. The scientists said the nutritional value was similar but better and the enforced vegetarians cheered. There’d been no room for animals on Grow Your Own. “Hell,” had said the former USMC, “we’ll shoot something when we land."

  And then seven computer chips, traded for a Fender knock-off made in Djakarta along with the fake Hammond organs and Bechstein baby grands. The Fender had once kept good company, although at the time of the trade it lacked strings and a volume knob. No one knew they were computer chips until someone linked one up to a PC ("Dunno, man, felt like the cool thing to do") and they discovered real artificial intelligence.

  Within two years the chips and the pre-cogs amongst the colonists were running Deadhead. The human leaders, those pre-cogs who handled most of the trade with aliens, called themselves Progs.

  The beginning of the good life.

  Creativity died.

  Not immediately, and always kicking and screaming, sparkly painted fingernails clawing at the colony’s raison d’être. But. Faced with a choice between anarchic misrule and order, between danger and safety, between a future and none, the majority made the sensible decision. After all, the Progs didn’t ban music or art or anything. They just wanted it kept simple. Chanting was good. So was plant drawing, a prize to any that looked exactly like the original. Think calm, think serene, and no surprises.

  No more psychedelic drugs available, no cocaine. No uppers of any kind. Nothing to disturb the serene. Heroin, yes. Downers. And a strain of marijuana that should have been called Silent Kush. When they weren’t working, Deadheaders spent most of their time stoned. No one needed to work very much.

  Who needs to be creative? The Progs have the answers to problems that usually need imagination to solve.

  Who needs to be wildly self-expressive? Go chant or draw a leaf.

  The Progs called it The Way.

  The AIs managed to get a few robots built before the humans lost interest. Those robots begat more. It was a tranquil, automated world. Aliens still came to stare, trade, then left. Soon the colonists didn’t wonder, didn’t care, what the alien gizmos did. Leave it to the Progs and the AIs to figure it out.

  The AIs and Progs also solved a major problem: genetics.

  You do not want a colony to fail because of inbreeding.

  True, the population was increasing fast. The chances of cousins having kids were remote. But they did exist. Furtive sex behind the woodshed wants what furtive sex always wants: right here, right now and to hell with the gene pool. The AIs could map the colonists’ DNA, to establish which would be bad matches. Second and even third cousins could be a problem, over time. The Progs could go further. They could establish which pregnancies in the now would result in badness many years down the line. Only the Progs could sanction birth. It became The Way.

  It didn’t suit everyone. Various groups took off for distant places, desperate to preserve the dream that had led them to leave Earth. But it’s difficult going native on a planet where you don’t belong. All the tech, all the plant-stock, was with those who’d taken the path of least resistance. The breakaways either came limping back or vanished, presumed killed by an unknown nasty beyond the mountains or far out at sea.

  Deadhead, present time

  Nikos was sixteen, born into a tranquil world, and believed in The Way. How could you not? The Way told you the best time to plant crops, and where. How and when to avoid a bad storm or a flood. Life was usually good if uneventful on Deadhead, you knew what you’d be doing tomorrow, next month, next year. Most of the twenty thousand human population were content to meander on with their lives – but always in the same general, group-friendly direction.

  Several times a year – it varied from one year to the next – people would gather to watch two or more of their fellows executed. Not because they’d done wrong, but in order to readjust The Way. Sad, but necessary for the public good. The executioners, or Adjustors, were aside from the Progs the nearest to a superior social class Deadhead possessed. The expectant crowd would be excited and shout for the moment. It was the only time when extreme emotion was accepted. When the Adjusted died, the crowd gave out a collective sigh of release, now relaxed and content.
The execution place came to be known as Chop-Chop Square, although no one really knew why. It seemed apt and the name stuck. It took thirty years to go from peace and love to human sacrifice. Compared to other human descents into cruelty, the Stoners should be commended for remaining civilised as long as they did.

  * * *

  Nikos was overseeing a cultivator ploughing furrows when the Prog came for him. The cultivator didn’t really need overseeing. It was an extension of the AI that looked after the colony’s agriculture. Nikos was unnecessary. The AI, however, found humans interesting, even if they were a tad predictable. Besides, Nikos had unused work quotas that needed filling.

  The Prog wore the official long, technicoloured cloak and headband, plus high leather boots that had been brought from Earth. Early on the colony had thought to tan the skins of large indigenous six-legged creatures. It hadn’t been a success, the creatures beginning to rot as soon as they died. Now people wore shoes made from the bark of common tree-like plants that had recently started to rattle their branches whenever a human came near. High leather boots from Earth, polished till they shone, were a greater symbol of authority than the cloak and headband.

  “You have been Chosen,” the Prog – female, mid-aged, long dark hair, mole above her right eye – said solemnly. “It is the Way.” Then, seeing Nikos’ immediate alarm, “Not as an Adjustment. There is to be a test. If you succeed you will become an Expediter.”

  Nikos could only stare in shock.

  “This is a great honour.”

  Nikos didn’t care if success made him emperor of the galaxy. He quite enjoyed most of the Ceremony of Adjustment... the anticipation, the rising excitement, the Adjustors so stern in black, the Sword of Adjustment glittering in the sunshine, even the vacant stare of the Adjusted which meant, he secretly hoped – for Nikos was soft-hearted – that they were stoned out of their minds. It was the blood that upset him, and the way the heads bounced when they hit the ground.

  A blue jay flew overhead, its mouth parts writhing, so probably chasing down a meal. It had been easier to give the local fauna Earth names than new ones. These blue jays were said to be lucky. Nikos didn’t feel it. He looked beyond the Prog, beyond the purple fields of early wheat to the distant hills. He and three others had planned to go camping next week. But who would want to spend time with a junior Adjustor?

  “Your parents know,” she said.

  Nikos doubted his parents could remember who he was. “But...” he said.

  “There were three possible candidates,” she said kindly. “But you were the best.” She didn’t say that this had been foreseen a year ago. Progs did not want the common Herd (an old biker expression, the origin long forgotten) to know quite how planned their lives actually were. It went way beyond who could or could not have children. Nor did the Progs want the Herd to know that they, the Progs, often had no idea why an action had to be taken, only that it must. Better for all if the Progs were seen to be all-knowing and wise. Even a heavily stoned population could revolt.

  “You must come with me now,” she said, ignoring his obvious distress.

  He went because it was The Way, which had to be cherished above all. He went because he could imagine the sound of his head hitting the ground.

  * * *

  There was a crowd waiting, not in Chop-Chop Square but next to the Grow Your Own’s rusting carcass, where the Progs and Adjustors now lived. He saw them gazing into the sky, raised his eyes and saw an alien ship – they were always alien – slowly descend. To Nikos it was a fairy-tale palace of metal spars, struts, walkways and platforms on which rested various-sized pods. He’d have preferred it more colourful but maybe it lit up at night. The ship landed in silence.

  “Nikos!”

  He turned to see the Prog had been joined by several colleagues and Adjustors. One of the black-cloaked latter stepped forward, holding out a weapon traded from the floating, warty aliens. He’d been told about the weapon in school, with a warning never to accept one if offered by the warty aliens. Nikos was confused but thankful it wasn’t the Adjustment Sword.

  They showed him how to use the weapon: point and press the button on top.

  “It is time,” the Prog said.

  Nikos turned back to see one of the pods detach itself from the ship and float closer to them. It stopped, the door opened and a woman emerged.

  Tawny blonde hair, bedraggled as if she’d stepped from the shower. Young, moving gracefully. Wearing a loose top several sizes too large and a pair of loose, knee-length trousers. And the angriest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

  “My name’s Tatia,” she said.

  Except accents change and to Nikos it sounded like minoms-Tatao, but he got the drift. “I’m Nikos,” he said. “I have to kill you.”

  The woman understood “kill” and “you”. “Why?”

  “It’s The Way.”

  She looked at him with a sad little smile on her face. “In my country we shake hands first.”

  He got the drift of that too. A little strange, but when his own people were executed for The Way they were calm, often happy. Also stoned out of their soon-to-be-extinct minds.

  “Stay away!” shouted the Prog, too late.

  One moment Nikos was standing there, one hand holding the weapon, the other outstretched. The next flat on his back, no weapon in his hand and sharp, grinding pain between his legs.

  * * *

  There was a collective sigh from the crowd. Tatia saw a black-cloaked human produce a large sword. He was in a small group of similarly dressed humans, together with several others in really objectionable multi-coloured robes, with headbands even. The priesthood/government and their enforcers, she assumed. She suspected a colony gone very wrong.

  “And the fuck is all this about?” Tatia pointed what had to be a weapon at the woman who’d cried out. Her forefinger was on the button. The woman fluttered her hands in a protective gesture.

  “You have to die,” the woman said. “It is The Way.”

  Tatia was getting to grips with the accent. “Not my way.”

  “It has to be,” she insisted.

  “And yet I’ve got the gun.”

  “We are many.”

  Tatia saw the crowd begin to move towards them. The black-cloaked male flourished his sword. A creature the size of a large rat with four wings flew between her and the colonists. It had blue tentacles for a face. She wondered how alien the colonists had become. Did it matter? They wanted to kill her.

  “Time for a change,” Tatia said. She pointed the weapon at the man with the sword and pressed the trigger.

  A small ball of blinding-white plasma left the weapon and moved towards the man. He dodged left. So did the plasma. He dodged right. So did the plasma. It would have been kinder if it had sped directly at him. Instead it moved like a dog playing with its master, until he accepted his fate and crouched down, whimpering. The plasma ball vanished inside him. The man suddenly stood up straight and tall and rigid, arms at right angles, eyes staring.

  He dissolved, slowly. Skin becoming opaque, then melding with muscle, fat and bone as he fell to the ground. A human thick soup oozed out from under his cloak.

  The crowd moaned. Release, not anger. That was strange.

  Tatia stared up at the sky, trying not to vomit. She saw a cloud that looked a bit like Australia, deliberately thought about Melbourne’s antique trams until her stomach settled, then slowly looked back to the ground. The man was now a soggy lump. The crowd were slowly dispersing. She could smell marijuana in the air, which could explain some of the strangeness but not all.

  “You,” she said, gesturing to the teenager, “fuck off back home.”

  Nikos scrambled painfully to his feet and ran off, part doubled up. He was followed by the priests and their guards. Only the woman remained.

  “You got a shitty system,” Tatia said.

  “It is ours.”

  “Why didn’t you run?”

  “To kill you.” She produced an
ancient Glock 17 automatic pistol, a revered relic from Earth, pointed and pulled the trigger, even as Tatia desperately brought her own weapon to bear.

  The woman pressed the trigger again. Nothing happened.

  Tatia smashed her weapon into the woman’s face, watched as she crumpled to the ground, then reached for the handgun. “You had the safety on,” Tatia said, surprised by her own calm, which remained as she fired two bullets into the woman’s chest. Tatia pocketed the Glock, turned back to the pod then changed her mind. “You look about my size,” she said and pulled off the woman’s boots. Thought a moment, then took the headband. She had no intention of wearing it, but guessed it was ceremonial.

  The crowd milled around as the Progs tried to exert control. They failed. One of the Adjustors raised a sword to force obedience. Many in the crowd snarled defiance. He swung the sword in panic and cut deep into a woman’s arm. She screamed, the crowd went silent for a minute... and then attacked him.

  A kilometre away, an alien sphere about two metres across, warty, grey-green skin, wearing a metallic belt with various pouches and containers, floated a metre or so off the ground. It could be the twin to the one killed by the Houston posse. It could be observing the sudden collapse of a society. Aliens, who knows?

  * * *

  Tatia went back to the pod and waited for the Originators to take her away from all this. The same grating sound as the force fields snapped. The ship began to rise.

  She watched the planet recede beneath her and thought how the colonists had been expecting her.

  Être, mourir, ça suffit.

  > I’m thinking in French, Mom? To be, to die, that’s it?

  < It was a bad experience, dear. Think of something good.

  Her first real boyfriend had been French Canadian. He’d taken Tatia – maybe accepted, because she wanted rid of the virgin thing soon as – with passion, sensuality and kindness, a combination rare in a sixteen-year-old boy. And in many adult men. Where was he now? Perhaps back in Sault Sans Marie, although he’d talked of becoming a trapper in the Wild. If so, she wondered how he’d be on an alien planet.