Crash

by Guy Haley

  Kernow looked from one to the other, face pale and fixed. Leonid caught the look of fear in his eyes and let the matter drop. He did not care if he argued with his father, but it could go badly for their servants to witness it.

  “Yes. Sorry, father.”

  “Might I answer your question?” Kernow was addressing Leonid, but looking to his father. The old man gave a curt nod.

  A holograph appeared in the air, a detailed schematic of a hibernation pod. Kernow gestured to it with his baton. “This is the Mark IV hibernation system. We’ve run extensive tests on it, but there is still, unfortunately, a failure rate of eight per cent.”

  “Failure rate?” said Leonid.

  Kernow smiled sadly. “The occupants don’t wake up.”

  “Natural wastage, a consequence of any venture,” said Ilya casually. “Easily got around. This, my boy, is why we include additional expedition members. The deployment of extra resources is necessary when taking a risk. Is that not right, Doctor Kernow?”

  “Indeed it is, sir. I am sure we will, given time, bring the risks down, but a failure rate of eight per cent has been judged acceptable for this first effort.”

  “Leonid, do you have any other questions for the doctor?”

  “Thank you, doctor. Most illuminating,” he said limply.

  “Now you remember your manners,” grumbled his father.

  Doctor Kernow bobbed his head and left the father and son alone. Ilya pushed himself up out of his chair with a sigh. It was a weary noise, ripe with disappointment.

  “You mean to send me,” said Leonid.

  Ilya went to the room’s drinks cabinet and selected himself an 18-year-old Scotch. He held the bottle up toward Leonid, who shook his head. Ilya got two glasses out anyway. “I would have thought that obvious, Leonid. You have been included in this process since near the start. Only you have sat in every key meeting with me, although you disdain to show an interest. I did not think it necessary to spell it out to you. Was I wrong?”

  “You were going to formally tell me at some point; announce it.”

  Ilya finished pouring his drink, and recorked the bottle carefully.

  “I did not think it necessary,” he repeated. He was holding his annoyance at bay. This was always the way their conversations began. Ilya tried to teach him something that he regarded as of great importance, Leonid’s anger made him unreceptive. They progressed from there to fighting. Tonight was different. The old man looked up from under his brows. He wasn’t pleading with his son, exactly – the likes of Ilya Petrovich did not plead – but there was the promise of conciliation. Leonid debated whether or not to take his father up on it.

  “Leonid, Leonid, Leonid, my son.” He walked back to the nest of sofas and handed Leonid the drink he did not want, as he had handed him so many other things he did not want. “Times are changing. You are growing. You are young by the standards of this age. When I was a boy, you would have been a man already. It is time to take the responsibilities of a man.”

  “What are the responsibilities of a man? How to spend your money, father?”

  Ilya laughed a little at that, much to his son’s surprise. “No, I have plenty of other sons who can do that perfectly well for me. I absolve you of that duty.”

  Leonid’s eyebrows rose. He took a sip of the drink, for want of something to say. It was warm and mellow, redolent of peat and heather.

  His father held up his glass and nodded appreciatively at it. “It is good, this, yes? One of the best, of this age at least. A lot of time and expertise goes into making a drink such as this.” He sucked a residue of it from his top lip and nodded. “This is a drink of the land that made it. It is poison, of course, but delightful poison.” He sat back, never taking his eyes from his son’s face. “If we could be savoured, what would our chemical signature tell us, Leonid? We are of no land. Are we Russian? No. Our names are a nonsense, a product of a period when it was fashionable for Americans to reclaim their ancestry. From the moment our forebears set foot on these shores until a century back, we were simply Peters. Suddenly, it was not enough for citizens of this nation to say they were Irish or Italian. They tried to become so, laying claim to something their ancestors had tried so hard to shed. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  Ilya’s eyes had a strange light to them. Leonid found it hard to breathe.

  “We are not American, either; not really. We Pointers are citizens of the world, countrymen of no man. We rich are stateless, refugees adrift on rafts of money.”

  Leonid struggled to talk. He managed a modicum of defiance. “I am sure the world’s many real refugees would appreciate that sentiment.”

  His father tutted. “Leonid, my boy, allow me a little drama. No one would deny me a small metaphor now. This is important.”

  Ilya sat forward again, cradling his glass in his massive hands. It was unusual to see him move so much; ordinarily he was an implacable colossus, as much of stone as flesh. Leonid realised that for once, just for once, his father was uncomfortable about something.

  “We rich, we are not apart from the world, no matter how hard some of our kind try to make it appear so. It has always been a source of great sorrow to me, Leonid, that you and I do not see eye to eye. I, like you, think that our wealth comes with a great deal of responsibility, that we cannot leave the poor to wallow in poverty, that –”

  A flush of anger coloured Leonid’s cheeks. “You know that is not what I feel. We have no right to our wealth –”

  “Please!” His father held up his muscular hand. “Let me finish. You think it different, I understand that. One day, you will not. I know you disagree with me, but tonight I do not wish to argue. May we acknowledge that and continue without argument?”

  Leonid took another drink. He gulped too much and it burned his throat. His father took his silence for assent.

  “Thank you. We have every right to be rich, Leonid, because our ancestors fought for it; they nurtured their wealth, they grew it. But that does not mean we have the right to squander it, or hoard it, or abuse the privilege it grants us.” He pursed his lips. He looked tired. “If I had been less adamant on pressing home this point while you were a boy, then perhaps we would not so often reach this impasse. If so, your despair at your heritage is my error. Being rich is a privilege, Leonid. It brings with it responsibility to those around us.”

  “Noblesse oblige?” said Leonid drily.

  Ilya slapped the arm of his sofa with his palm and pointed. “Yes, yes. You goad me with the term, but yes, if that makes you happy. That is exactly what it is. We have the responsibility to use our wealth wisely, and if we do, then we have every right to remain rich. Your rejection of wealth, this is where you are wrong, son. The natural order of human affairs is a hierarchy, as has been proven time and again. Even in the smallest unit of human civilisation, a hierarchy prevails. Set up a society without hierarchy? Hierarchy asserts itself. Of course, decisions, wealth, resources, all might be held collectively, but there are always, always” – he wagged his finger – “those whose opinion carries more weight, those whose votes break ties. Make the society more complex, and then the hierarchy becomes accordingly complex. Men were made to be ruled, they cry out for it. We are fortunate to be rich, fortunate to have the right to be rich, but we are rulers if we like it or not. It is the worst kind of dishonour not to live up to one’s responsibilities.”

  “Very well, father, so we do not argue tonight. Tell me, what are these responsibilities in relation to the Gateway project? You would have me go and plant the flag of the Pointers on some virgin world? Really, father, I thought –”

  His father cut him dead. “I did not say that, did I, Leonid? What concerns me is the survival of our family. This idea of supplying our world with goods and elevating everyone to luxury is a nonsense; even should the Zheng He open its ridiculous, improbable star gate and the Market throw wide its arms to encompass all the heavens, I do not believe it will work.”

  Leonid smiled unplea
santly. His father had always had a penchant for plodding theatrics.

  “Our responsibilities are this: we must guide mankind out of the Solar System, before it is too late. People look up to us. We have to do it. If the Pointers will not do it, who will?” said Ilya.

  Ironically, it was Leonid who hated the word Pointer, the word Ilya used freely and without embarrassment. It had been given to them by the lower orders, it intentionally made them sound like dogs. The Pointers had claimed it as their own, as they had claimed everything else on the planet for themselves.

  “I have chosen you to go to represent our family. You, and Yuri. He is older than you, but he will be left in no doubt that it is you who are in charge.”

  “Should I not succumb to the eight per cent peril,” said Leonid.

  Ilya acknowledged this with another mild shrug. “Redundancy needs to be built into the system.”

  “So I am to be your bold ambassador.”

  “You are to be the governor of the first extra-solar outpost of our family. It is a great role, the breaking of new territory, one not filled by any man for four generations. This is not some dusty Martian station, but a whole new galaxy of possibility. You should be proud! I am.”

  “And me, father? What is my risk?”

  “It is eight per cent. You run the same risk as those you will lead. I would have thought that you, of all people, would have appreciated that. In this, the Pointer and the rest stand equal. It can be no other way.”

  Leonid felt that this was as it should be, but that his father had acknowledged it so freely poisoned his own conviction.

  “You will be accompanied by loyal servants of our house.”

  The word ‘house’ made Leonid’s skin crawl.

  “I have put together a team of experts, but they will all defer to you,” his father continued. “Scientists of various types, their leader will report to you, and I expect you to be sensible and not interfere with their work overly much. Engineers, agricultural specialists, and some military. No!” The hand went up again. “I will not hear any objection. You will be a long way from home. Our next round of discussions will include introductions to your key advisors. They will be your wisdom, Leonid. You must listen to them. A king is only as good as his advisors.” Ilya drained his glass. “I have other matters to attend to. You must excuse me.” He stood, and a servant appeared with his overcoat.

  “Father, I do not want to be a king, not of any kind.”

  His father favoured him with a weary smile. For a moment his true age shone through his expensive health treatments and clothing.

  “Do you not understand anything I have tried to tell you? Your reluctance is why I am sending you. I will not set up a tyrant.”

  You accept and promulgate the tyranny of money, thought Leonid.

  “Good bye, Leonid.”

  His father left the room. Leonid sat where he was, waving away the servant that came to ask if he required anything. On impulse, he stalked over to the window, and stared down at the pavement and the limousine on the road, and the canal beyond it.

  The chauffeur snapped to attention, and opened the rear door.

  Perhaps his father was setting him free. Or it might simply have been that he was disposable; there were other heirs to the Petrovitch fortune more like-minded to Ilya. He was his father’s youngest son, after all.

  As he watched his father walk out from the front of the building, stiff with age yet still as unstoppable as the march of time, he thought both were probably true.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Yuri

  YURI STOOD UPON the balcony and howled into the warm gale. Rain splashed into his Martini. Far below his feet, waves crashed into the roots of the tower. Light, music and laughter were at his back, the raging forces of nature in his face, and Yuri felt alive.

  Yuri was a creature of the night, of parties that ceased two dawns after their beginning, of ladies whose imperfections were smoothed away by clever lighting, of flashing lights and lurid holos. The day held few charms for him; sunlight shone hard on a hard world. He could not bear to look at it.

  Yuri had all the benefits of his brothers. Antenatal genetic tweaking made him superior to other men. Not a creature, not a freak or an Alt; he was a Petrovitch through and through, his genes his father’s and his mother’s, but they were the best his father and his mother had to offer. His mind was quick, his body perfect, his senses sharp. He would live two hundred years or more.

  But Yuri drank. His father sent him to rehabilitation centres and to hospitals of the mind, the places where the rich adjusted themselves to better enjoy being rich. Yuri escaped. His father infested him with medical technology to scrub his blood. Yuri had them driven from his system by electromagnetic pulse. His father fed him drugs to counteract the narcotics Yuri took. Yuri found stronger drugs. Yuri gambled, and womanised, and shouted venom at his father while consuming his wealth.

  If Yuri was not paralysed by fear of what others might think of him, he would have wept. But Yuri wanted to be strong. Yuri wanted to be admired.

  Yuri wanted to be loved.

  He vented his sorrow into the storm, hiding it in wild laughter. Excess was his armour, profligacy his weapon.

  “Sir.”

  Yuri ignored his minder. He ignored most of what his father told him, and of what those his father sent to watch over him said.

  “Sir!”

  Corrigan, the man’s name was. An uncouth British thug, tasked with harrying him at every turn. Yuri pretended not to remember his name. Yuri was not granted an Alt as a guard, for fear of what his authority over it might engender.

  “Sir, I must insist you come inside. You’ll be blown off the balcony. Come inside!”

  Yuri felt the wind. He leaned into it. The noise of the crashing waves grew as his head cleared the balcony. Let it take him. Let it throw him away as he had been thrown away by his family. Yuri the dissolute. Yuri the failure.

  A hand. Pressure on his bicep. Yuri whipped round, outraged, his self-pity flipping instantaneously to anger.

  “You are coming inside now, whether you like it or not,” said Corrigan. His clothes ran with moisture, wicking the rain away, but his hair was wet.

  “Release me!”

  “No.”

  The hand pulled at him, dragging him away from the thrilling precipice.

  “Get off me now! I will have your head for this.”

  “No you won’t.” Corrigan’s grip strengthened. His hand was so huge it encircled Yuri’s arm entirely. Yuri, his perfect body wasted by drugs and inattention to eating, was rock-star skinny. “Listen to me, you little prick; your dad has told me to do whatever I must to keep you safe, and I will. I don’t give a fuck what you threaten me with or what you say. I’ve got carte blanche from daddy, and I will kick your feeble little arse through those doors right in front of your friends if you don’t get in out of this bloody storm, alright?”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” hissed Yuri.

  “Try me.”

  Corrigan’s grip tightened, and Yuri stifled a whimper.

  “That hurts.”

  “Get inside.”

  Corrigan half-guided, half-dragged the faux-Russian to the open doors. Once inside, they slid shut, two quarter spheres of glass that joined into a seamless hemisphere covering half the balcony. Rain drummed against the glass.

  Yuri’s costume was soaked, his feathers bedraggled, his makeup ran. He sagged in Corrigan’s grip and let out a shrill laugh. Corrigan let go of him.

  “You’re a fucking mess,” the thug said disdainfully. “Go enjoy your party. Not too much, mind; I’ll be watching.”

  Yuri rubbed at his arm as Corrigan strode off into the crowd, rudely pushing Yuri’s friends out of the way. Servants hurried over to him with towels and fresh paint. They fussed over him, soothing him, clucking over his wounded pride.

  He hated them all. Curiously, he thought, he did not hate Corrigan.

  “DO YOU THINK the new order will be strange? F
ood and luxury for everyone, they say.” Oswald stared into his drink. “Makes one feel rather less special, don’t you think?”

  “Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie.” Yuri draped a waif-thin arm over his friend’s shoulder. “The plebs aren’t coming!”

  “I rather thought they were. I rather thought that was the whole point,” said Oswald. He was prim, fat, someone who could have come from anywhere. Like many of the Pointers, he was white. A citizen of the world. A citizen of nowhere.

  “Then you rather better do some thinking, eh?” Yuri mocked. “A wormhole!”

  “But it’s what they say on the holo. It’s what my tutors say.” Mika, a timid little mouse of a girl.

  “Oh, Mika,” said Yuri. He caught her chin in his hand and lifted it up. “You are so beautiful, and so very fuckable, and so very stupid.” Her smile vanished, and she pushed at him. He squeezed tight before he let go.

  “Who will pay for its upkeep? Who will pay for the ships to take people to this wormhole, and for the ships to take them from the other end to wherever it is they’ll end up? How much do you think a ticket will cost, dear Mika? A year’s wages? Ten years? A lifetime? No, there is no more opportunity in the stars than there is here on Earth. The poor might slave their lives away to buy a ticket, to find nothing for them to do there but slave some more. Build a world with robots, not with men. There are too many people here. Why let them infest the stars? Let the unwashed masses have the dying Earth. The stars belong to the rich.” Yuri gave a dazzling smile. “As is only right.” There was a bitter, underlying irony to what he said, that he hid from his friends. He wanted to provoke them into disagreeing – it was expected that Pointers make some pretence at caring – but none of them did. Yuri grew angrier.