A Tangled Road to Justice

by Olan Thorensen

He took another drink and wiped the froth from his lips. “The Unionist Party on Astrild is pushing to consolidate enough of the population centers to let them be considered the government of the planet. The party’s strength is in most of the secondary cities, along with a sizable following in the capital, Oslo. Naturally, the two of us can’t force hundreds of thousands of Astrild citizens to support the Unionists. However, there are large numbers of people who would be supportive if they either didn’t have greater worries or weren’t too intimidated by certain factions or individuals. Our job will be to remove key obstacles.

  “Let me give you a theoretical example. Suppose there were several hundred men and women working at a mining site. Thirty armed guards prevent them leaving and keep them working with only minimal recompense, along with basic food and shelter. And suppose the location is outside the control of anything we would consider legitimate authority, and the people are not allowed a political voice. If those hundreds of people were set free, most would support the Unionists, which you and I would favor. Tell me, then, what would you do?”

  “And there’s no authority that would intervene? How is that possible?”

  “Thus far, the major cities are insular—concerned with their own issues and reluctant to become involved in something that may be happening hundreds to thousands of kilometers away, unless basic commerce is affected.

  “I’ll make the situation even simpler. Assume there is no possibility of outside help for those hundreds being kept in virtual slavery. Either we do something, or nothing happens. And no waffling by saying things like ‘That couldn’t happen’ or ‘Why don’t the people revolt?’ It’s us or nothing.”

  Millen had set up a scenario with limited options that might be impractical or impossible in the real universe. It was a method to delve into basic positions. I remembered reading about physicists coming up with “thought experiments” that were impossible to carry out but where no basic principles were violated. I’d play along . . . for now.

  “All right. Given the scenario, I suppose I’d do whatever possible. Assuming I was unsuccessful by walking up to the captors and convincing them with my compelling personality and logic, then it would take some level of action. Maybe kidnapping the guards, one by one, until the rest got scared off. As a last resort, and assuming the scenario was accurate and the treatment bad enough, moving on to more direct action might be justified—something short of a suicide attack, one against thirty.

  “But that’s an easy, if improbable, example,” I said. “More likely is a community, group, or whatever that honestly believes they want to be left alone, or maybe they don’t like the proposed central government. I’m not going to go in, guns a-blazing, only to find out we’re not wanted.”

  “Don’t worry about political persuasion. That is not our mandate and is up to others. However, don’t dismiss my example. Perhaps not the exact scenario I outlined, but cases where people’s actions are constrained by forces beyond their control. You can look at it as our task to remove those constraining factors.”

  I leaned back in my chair and sipped on my beer—buying moments to think. Was this any different from what I had been doing in the FSES? Putting down terrorist groups or political factions bent on violent control of unwilling populations were the missions I’d most identified with. Other times had been different—suppressing rebellions by nations or populations unhappy with existing governments. Too often, the grievances had had a basis, and the Federation was more concerned, in my opinion, with tamping down turmoil than pressuring local governments to reform. It was one of the reasons that leaving Earth and looking outward had been so attractive to me.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll admit helping people deal with assholes they can’t deal with themselves has some appeal. It’s just that based on how little I know about you and what we’re supposed to do, I can’t guarantee I’d go along with anything without at least some reservations, and I certainly reserve the right to decide what I won’t do.”

  My statement didn’t seem to faze Millen.

  “Good enough,” he said. “While there may be difficult decisions to make, they can’t be made by sociopaths. Hard decisions need to weigh on the decider’s conscience, even if they take actions they hate.”

  For the next hour, we had another beer, ate at a restaurant on an adjacent Geminorum ring, and talked—mainly Millen, asking polite questions about my life and giving away nothing about himself. When the bill arrived, he paid it with a card he produced.

  “Okay, Everett . . . ,” he paused. “I think we can use first names. We’ll be here for another three weeks. That’s when the next ship leaves Thalassa, heading for Astrild. I have matters to deal with, so I won’t see you until two days before we depart.”

  He pulled out a second card and laid it in front of me.

  “I’ve put enough credits in this account to take care of anything you’d like to do in the meantime. I suggest you shuttle down to Thalassa and see whatever sights and do anything that appeals to you. Just don’t get yourself injured or in local trouble. In either case, I’d be back to finding an assistant.”

  I noticed three things in his parting statement. The credit must be significant to cover any and all expenses—later confirmed by a shocked look and the sudden obsequious behavior of a shop worker when I handed over the card to buy a set of common Thalassian clothes. Second, I still had my job—whatever it was—and third, I was his “assistant” and not his “partner.”

  The next three weeks were in the running for the best “vacation” time I’d ever had—and certainly the most expensive. Just the cost of the round-trip shuttle to the surface would have choked me before this. Millen hadn’t said anything about being cost-conscious, so I wasn’t. After a top-flight hotel week in a beach fleshpot, I opted to spend the rest of the time touring the planet’s natural wonders, of which Thalassa had an abundance. I found myself imagining what Earth must have been like before overpopulation and environmental degradation were finally addressed in the early twenty-third century.

  I wondered whether Millen was keeping tabs on me. If so, was he apprehensive about the three days I spent hang-gliding the updrafts of the stupendous Killdevil Gorge? The instructor I’d hired on the first day took time off to accompany me the final ten days. Salecia was probably in better physical condition than I was, and the days and nights with her were a serious workout for someone just out of star flight stasis. She saw me to the shuttle up to Geminorum Station and proffered an open invitation if ever I came back to Thalassa. I assured her I would be eager to see her again, which was true, though I didn’t say I doubted I’d ever return. Astrild was farther from Earth, and Millen had implied future destinations were likely to be as far or farther out from the home world.

  I contacted Millen and met him in the same restaurant. He asked for the credit card. It still had an impressive balance, despite my best efforts, and he didn’t blink when he checked it with a reader at the table. Either he couldn’t do math or didn’t care how much I’d spent. Maybe I should have gone even more extravagant. I’d know better next time.

  Millen said we had to wait two nights on the station before leaving. After a beer and some inconsequential small talk, I was again left to myself. I wondered why I couldn’t have spent one more night with Salecia, but Millen had been insistent on the date of my return. The next time I saw Millen, we were being prepped for side-by-side stasis pods.

  CHAPTER 3

  Astrild sat fifty-two light-years from Earth. The suns of Thalassa and Astrild were both in the Cygnus Constellation, as seen from Earth, but they weren’t in a straight line out. I would have racked up about fifty-eight light-years’ worth of kilometers if there were credit for interstellar travel. The trip from Thalassa to Astrild took three months of real-time—meaning the same three months on Earth and on the ship. All the Einstein time dilation gobbledygook didn’t happen with the Alcubierre drive that starships used—don’t ask me why. I once had a private with a physics degree
try to explain to me how faster-than-light travel was achieved: something about contracting space in front of the ship and expanding it behind the ship. He might as well have said it was by magic for all I understood his explanation. I was okay just to know it worked.

  The star system we were headed for had several formal names, depending on which nomenclature system you wanted to use; among these were BD+29o3872, HD 190360, HIP 98767, and HR 7670. Not surprisingly, the system was almost always referred to by the fifth option, Gliese 777.

  Our destination was Gliese 777-A, a G6IV-class star similar to Sol. The star had a partner, Gliese 777-B, a red dwarf 3,000 astronomical units from the primary star. The two stars orbited each other about every ten thousand years, which, along with the low luminosity of the dwarf, meant that the primary was effectively a single star and explained Astrild’s biosystem; most multiple star systems were too unstable for life to develop.

  The first colony in the Gliese 777-A system had picked a better name for the sun. Sol was already taken by Earth, so they chose Baldur—a name I remembered was a Norse god. I had to look up Astrild, what they named the only inhabitable planet, and found she was a Norse goddess of love. The main city, Oslo, had the only spaceport. It didn’t take a super-sleuth to conclude that either the original colonists were from Scandinavia or their leader was. I was wrong. The leader was Hideo Hyahashi, and most of the first five hundred colonists were from Lebanon. Go figure.

  You might wonder how I knew such details about the star system and the planet. I assure you, there was a lot more, much of it incredibly dull unless you were an astronomer or a planetary history buff. There had been an unspecified “technical delay” in leaving Geminorum Station. This didn’t inspire tranquility when I was being hooked up with wires and tubing, about to be made unconscious, and in a vessel I didn’t control to travel 40 light-years or more. While we waited for the tires to be re-inflated or whatever had to be done, a technical description of the Gliese 777 system and history of Astrild played over and over for two hours. By the fifteenth iteration—and yes, I was counting after the fourth time—I’d begun using the discomfort and pain of the stasis preparation procedure as a distraction from the narration.

  At least this time through the procedure, I was prepared for what would follow—not like the first leg. And yet here I was, undergoing the same effects after the transit from Thalassa to Astrild. But what really annoyed me was Millen. I had noticed him appearing nonchalant during the required pre-stasis briefing, naturally given by a cheerful young woman, but I didn’t understand Millen’s attitude until I emerged in the station above Astrild. Millen wasn’t affected by the stasis treatment. He came out of it as if nothing had happened. I was pissed.

  I might not have felt quite as bad as the first time coming out of stasis, but not quite as bad still meant I felt like shit. I wondered whether the body tolerated the stasis treatment the more times you did it. If true, how many transits had Millen experienced to suffer no after-effects?

  Whatever the reason for Millen’s ability to tolerate stasis, the procedure hadn’t prevented him from being irritating. He wouldn’t stop whistling something repetitive until a woman with a seven- or eight-year-old kid snapped at him to quit or move on to a different tune. He politely apologized and began a series of different tunes for the next hour.

  I returned to a section of the recovery area with a view of Astrild passing by as the station spun. The orientation of the station to the planet was different than at Geminorum, so the view appeared through wall-mounted monitors.

  Wherever they got the name, Astrild was a beautiful planet from orbit. Water covered 85 percent of the surface, with a single continent accounting for the rest. It was so similar to Thalassa, I wondered whether inhabitable planets with such a high percentage of water were the norm. Millen assured me they weren’t.

  The summary broadcast while we were recovering said the climate was moderate, with more constant seasons than Earth, because of less axial tilt. Cloud patterns resembled those on Earth, and the land was mottled green and brown. Gravity wouldn’t be a problem—it was 96 percent of Earth’s, so I’d feel slightly lighter. The oxygen level was 16 percent at sea level, lower than Earth’s 21 percent, but not a problem until you got above 3,700 meters—12,000 feet. I still retained my uncle’s persistent clinging to the old American measurements.

  Astrild seemed a pleasant place to live, but the main economic attraction of the system to human civilization was a relative abundance of valuable resources. Of the eight planets, one was a super-Earth, five times Earth’s mass. This meant no human had ever set foot on its surface; a 90-kilogram man would weigh 450 kilograms and might resemble more a flat foot than an upright biped. Even with waldos and biomechanical suits, a human chest wouldn’t be able to breathe normally for more than a few minutes, so all surface activity took place via robots.

  An active research team had been tackling this problem ever since the system was surveyed because the planet was lousy with heavy metals and rare earths. Minimal mining would continue until technology improved, but most mining was in the asteroid belts. Yes, belts, plural. The Baldur system had three, two of which were also rich in rare earths.

  Astrild showed its kinship to the rest of the system with its rare earth deposits, particularly gadolinium, promethium, neodymium, europium, and terbium. All were critical in various integrated circuits and catalytic processes—none of which I understood. Astrild’s deposits didn’t match those of the belts of Jotunheim, the super-Earth named after the home of the giants in Norse mythology, but were localized and rich enough to justify significant scattered mining operations.

  Astrild’s economy was based on being the hub of the entire system. Its enterprises included shipping rare earths to other planets, supporting the mining operations, discovering and shipping biological materials, and providing homes for settlers yearning for space and a new life different from that on Earth or the other settled planets. The biologicals were a minor part of the economy but were evidently a well-known asset of Astrild. Many aspects of the biome were unusually complex—again, not that I understood the details, but these biological samples and materials were in enough demand to justify the expense of export.

  The broadcast I was listening to ended with yet another perky young woman welcoming us to Astrild. Thankfully, the processing in this space station went faster than at Geminorum, and I listened to the description only once before we were hustled out of the recovery area into a waiting part of the station. An hour later, Millen said he was hungry and we went to eat.

  We hung around the station for a full day, waiting for a shuttle slot to the surface. It took me all of fifteen minutes to tour the entire place, which was minuscule compared to Geminorum. It hadn’t occurred to me what to expect, but Millen said it took a lot more infrastructure than Astrild had to build a major space station.

  Millen also said he was in communication with unspecified contacts in Oslo and left me to recover to a semblance of normalcy. Then we shuttled down to the only spaceport, located outside the main city of Oslo. The craft had ports, and I was able to get a view of the planet’s dark side and the single large continent that made up 95 percent of the land surface.

  “Impressive to see so few lights from orbit, isn’t it?” Millen said.

  I had been thinking the same thing. “My one time seeing Earth from orbit, there were lights everywhere, and near the major population areas you couldn’t pick out individual light sources. Here, the few lights seem eerily lonely.”

  “Well, that’s the difference between twenty billion people and three million,” Millen said.

  “Knowing it and seeing it are different,” I said.

  My stomach tried to make contact with my throat, as the shuttle hit turbulence and the belt and shoulder straps bit into me. I had had several night insertions from high altitude while serving in the FSES. I’d hated it then and I hated it now, sitting strapped inside a metal container over which I had no control. The Thalas
sa shuttle had been bigger and newer, and maybe its pilot hadn’t enjoyed testing passengers’ tolerance for nausea.

  “Please check your seat belts. We are on final approach to Oslo Spaceport.”

  The announcement came over the comm system, and we all cinched up our belts. There had been an earlier warning that the transition from super- to subsonic on shuttles could be rough. This one was. I bit my tongue once and could taste blood. Millen dozed through the rest of the flight. Jerk.

  Millen stretched and yawned. “I don’t think they get many visitors not working for the mining companies or immigrants looking for open land and a fresh start. We’ll stick to our story of intending to settle here, looking for opportunities, before we decide where to go and what to do. We should get through their version of customs quickly. My information is that they’re eager for immigrants and don’t care about background. It’s not always that way with colonies. Someone will meet us and get us settled with lodging for the first day, so we can adjust to local time.”

  He yawned again and began humming some ditty whose lyrics I couldn’t quite make out. Yes, it was extremely irritating. Here I was gripping the armrests of my seat, and Millen was oblivious to the shuttle’s gyrations. I wondered whether he was really that unperturbed or was putting on a performance. It was a standard month before I decided it was both.

  Before I could ask who would be meeting us and how did Millen know we’d be met, he closed his eyes and appeared to be asleep again. I followed suit. If Millen wasn’t putting on an act, it felt like an odd hint of kinship between us because I also could sleep on demand.

  Twenty minutes later, the flight smoothed out once we got below 7,000 meters. I looked out the window at billowy clouds lit up by the shuttle’s lights. It took less than a minute for us to plow through the cloud layer, and I got my first, close-up, daylight view of Astrild. I felt reassured to be passing over land extending to the horizons. Millen, suddenly awake, peered out the window.