A King of Infinite Space

by Allen Steele

  By 2061, the Pax was facing one crisis after another. The democratic government which had been formed during the 2049 revolution was stagnant. While Congress, led by the majority New Ark Party, struggled to achieve a consensus decision on how to deal with the TBSA, several new political factions were vying for dominance. Chief among them was the Monarchist Party, which declared its intent to remake the Pax as a constitutional monarchy. Meanwhile, the lox was being steadily devalued, there was open hostility between the Jovians and Pax vessels which arrived at Callisto Station, and the aresians were complaining of being treated like poor cousins.

  In 2064, a special election called by the New Ark Party succeeded in keeping the New Ark in power, but only by a slender majority and with virtually no voter mandate. Several New Ark leaders left to join the Monarchists; among them were Macy Westmoreland, one of the instigators of the 2049 revolution and a heroine in Clarke County, and Lucius Robeson, a former Skycorp executive who had defected to the Pax just before the Moon War. The president and Congress couldn’t keep their promises to restore order to the Pax, so in early 2066 the Monarchists initiated a bloodless coup d’etat on Clarke County. The president and his staff were forced to flee the colony, and the Pax Astra suddenly became a monarchy.

  Once a new Parliament was elected to replace the former Congress, Macy Westmoreland was crowned as Queen Macedonia, with Lucius Robeson installed as chief of naval intelligence. Lunar aluminum replaced liquid oxygen as standard for the lox (although the name remained the same). The Pax commemorated the event by launching humankind’s first (and, as it turned out, the only) interstellar probe, the Queen Macedonia I, to the planetary system orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris, thirty-five light-years from Earth. This was the last straw for the aresian representatives; protesting that tax money had been squandered on a grandiose program which they had actively lobbied against, believing that their interests were being ignored by both crown and Parliament, and finding themselves virtually shut out of Parliament, they took the next ship back to Mars. Almost as soon as they arrived at Arsia City, the aresian satraps unanimously voted to secede from the Pax and declare Mars to be neutral.

  No one in the Pax knew it at this time, but a fringe group of Belt colonists, in conjunction with Callisto Station and several disenfranchised Martian satraps, had already formed their own secret organization. It isn’t unfair to call the Zodiac a deep-space mafia; its game wasn’t politics or terrorism, but capitalism waving the Jolly Roger: extortion against unaffiliated TBSA members and piracy on Pax vessels operating within the Belt and Jovian space. No one knew who its leader was, but rumor had it that he was a former Pax trade minister who fled Clarke County when the Monarchists came to power, taking with him several megalox in treasury funds.

  By 2067, the situation had become even worse for the Pax. Its vessels in the Belt and in Jovian space were being hijacked by privateers, and it was facing insurgency on the home front—this time, by the Homo superiors who had been decanted on the Moon just before the Moon War. The eldest of these motherless children were no more than seventeen, but they were all precocious far beyond their years. Calling themselves Superiors, they formed their own tight, highly disciplined enclaves within the free-wheeling lunar society, and were well on their way toward forming extended-family clans similar to those first formed in Descartes Station circa 2030, which in turn had become the basis of the aresian satraps and the TBSA clans. Next to the decadent selenians and the brawling aresians, though, the Superiors were puritans; their strict extropic philosophy—whatever the hell that was—made drinking, smoking, using drugs, eating meat, and mating with baseline humans (i.e. Primaries) reasons for expulsion from their clans.

  Perceiving the Superiors as a potential threat to Monarchist rule, Queen Macedonia decreed that they should be allowed to emigrate from the Pax if they so desired; she even went so far as to gift them with several decommissioned asteroid freighters, so as to speed their diaspora. A few clans chose to remain loyal to the Pax; they were quickly inducted into the newly formed Pax Astra Royal Navy. However, most of the Superiors made an exodus to the outer system, where they parlayed their innate spacefaring skills into trade alliances with the TBSA, the Jovians, and aresians. Although the Superiors proclaimed themselves to be apolitical, many in the Pax government believed that they had fallen in with the Zodiac.

  By the end of the sixties, Zodiac piracy against Pax vessels had reached crisis proportions. Pax spies in the Belt couldn’t discover where the pirates were coming from or who was backing them, but Sir Lucius believed that the Jovians were behind the hijackings. The Royal Navy frigate Intrepid was dispatched to the Jovian system, where a Royal Militia squad raided Callisto Station. They returned the base to Pax control, yet at the cost of the lives of almost a dozen colonists. In protest, the aresians broke all diplomatic ties with the Pax and closed its consulates on the Moon and Clarke County. The TBSA raised its tariffs again, and Pax vessels were embargoed from Ceres Station.

  In the meantime, the Pax managed to send a civilian expedition to Saturn, in hopes of eventually establishing a source for helium-3 that would bypass Callisto Station. The PASS argosy Hershel Explorer arrived in 2069, whereupon a small research outpost was established on Titan. Two months later, all transmissions from Huygens Base suddenly ceased. Fearing that renegade Superiors had raided the outpost, the Intrepid was dispatched to Titan.

  No Zodiac presence, past or present, was found by the PAM squad which ventured down to Titan’s muggy surface. What the soldiers discovered instead was that all the explorers who had inhabited the base, and nearly all the crewmen remaining aboard the orbiting Hershel Explorer, had either slaughtered each other or had committed suicide. The only survivors were three crewmen, including the Hershel’s captain, who had sealed themselves off from the rest of the crew and placed themselves in cold-sleep hibernation. Before they did so, though, they recorded a final logbook entry which told the gruesome story. The Titan expedition had discovered a microscopic life-form in a liquid-methane tide pool on the moon’s surface, one that mutated and became an aerobic virus when it was accidentally exposed to the base’s oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. This virus attacked the human central nervous system; before it rotted out their brains, it drove its victims into homicidal frenzy. There was no cure for it, no possible inoculation; the only way out was madness and death.

  It was unclear, from the records Chip was able to access from the Main Brain, exactly what happened next; however, the end results were well-documented. Despite efforts by the Intrepid to contain the virus—including the loss of the PAM squad which landed on Titan—the “Titan Plague” made its way into the asteroid belt during the next decade. Although further outbreaks were rare, the contagion reappeared on several different occasions; each time, entire ships or colonies were wiped out within a matter of hours.

  The Pax temporarily shut itself off from the outer system, allowing no vessels from the Belt or outer planets to enter near-space without undergoing rigorous quarantine procedures. Titan was placed off-limits by everyone. The governments of Earth went even further than that; alarmed by the prospect of a doomsday plague, they unilaterally prohibited any crewed spacecraft from landing anywhere on terran soil.

  The following decade was one of isolation and depression. With Earth shut off from space and the Pax from the outer system, Mars, Jupiter, and the TBSA were forced to rely upon their own resources for survival. They eventually formed the Ares Alliance. In an odd sense, perhaps the Titan Plague had done more good than harm; once it ran its course and became seldom seen (although sporadic outbreaks still occurred now and then), humankind realized that the solar system had become smaller during the last century, the worlds it inhabited codependent upon each other. The threat of interplanetary war evaporated along with the plague; the quarantines were lifted, and it seemed as if the solar system had finally been united.

  It was a fragile peace, though, and it didn’t last very long. The Ares Alliance soon announced new tariffs against
Pax vessels. Queen Macedonia died in 2086; Lucius Robeson, shortly after his coronation as King Lucius, called these tariffs “ransom without reason” and declared war against the Alliance. While Pax and Alliance vessels duked it out in the Belt, Earth declared itself off-limits once again. The System War didn’t last very long; it ended in 2091 with the signing of Treaty of Ceres, in which Callisto Station was reluctantly ceded to the Ares Alliance in exchange for trade agreements that put a cap on future tariffs.

  The Treaty of Ceres left the populated solar system divided into three main spheres of influence.

  The Pax Astra is still the dominant force in the inner system, with nearly two and a half million people living on the Moon and Clarke County, but economically stretched by war debts and still recovering from the economic depression suffered during the plague years. King Lucius is still on the throne, but he’s in his nineties now and it’s uncertain which is failing more quickly, his health or popular support behind his government. Nonetheless, Parliament has raised taxes on everyone and everything within the realm. The Monarchists remember their glory days, however short-lived, when the Pax held absolute power over the entire system; it’s no secret that they’re amassing military strength, even while imposing a virtual dictatorship at home.

  The Ares Alliance has just over a million people living on Mars and scattered across the Belt and the Jovian moons, but still dependent upon the Pax and Earth for trade. While the Alliance is more politically stable than the Pax, trade rivalries fester between the aresians and the TBSA; they remain united only in their scorn for the Pax. Even the Superiors hope King Lucius will die soon.

  And, finally, the Zodiac: mysterious as ever, outlawed by both the Pax and the Alliance, still the wild card. It’s rumored to be led by twelve secret houses, each taking the name of one of the constellations of the zodiac, its patriarchs spread across the Belt and the Jovian system. Although it has ceased hijacking Pax vessels, the Zodiac’s objectives remain unfathomable. To this day, no one knows the identity of its leader.

  This is history.

  So far as I can tell, it’s the same old shit as before, just with better special effects. It’s 2099, and everyone’s still trying to hose everyone else. Yeah, sure, it’s interesting, and some of this would have made a great George Lucas movie, but it isn’t doing me much good now, is it?

  Things change, though, when you’re trying to figure out what’s happened during the last hundred years while your head was bobbing in a tank of liquid nitrogen.

  One morning, I’m walking across the Great Hall, just as I do every morning while I’m on my way out to the habitat for another day of scut work, when I happen to glance down at the mosaic floor, and suddenly realize that the tiny bits of quartz and glass beneath my sandals form the twelve constellations of the zodiac. In its center is the Greek omega symbol, and surrounding it are the orbits of the eight major planets.

  That stops me cold. I stare at this carefully constructed pattern, and wonder why Mister Chicago has taken the time and effort to have this mosaic placed in the center of his castle.

  And then I remember what I’ve learned lately, and suddenly realize that the nameless leader of the Zodiac is much closer than I’ve ever suspected.

  CHAPTER

  TEN

  * * *

  SOMEBODY TO SHOVE

  There are two distinct types of people on the party circuit, whose customs and ideas are so much at variance that misunderstandings are inevitable and bitter clashes frequent. One group is called “Hosts” and the other “Guests.” Miss Manners often wonders, considering how little these groups have in common, why they socialize at all.

  —Judith Martin, Miss Manners’ Guide for the Turn-of-the-Millennium

  One morning after breakfast, when the time comes for our associates to give us our assignments for the day, Shemp, Russell, Sam, and I are told to go the end of the main corridor in the habitat’s lowest level. None of us has ever visited Level D before, and we aren’t given an explanation what we’re supposed to do once we get there. We’ve no choice, though, but to go to a lift that carries the four of us down to Level D, then follow the corridor to something called Access AH-12.

  It’s a long walk, but we don’t make it alone. The corridor is busy with the habitat’s underground inhabitants, who ignore four white-robed servants as if they’re school kids on a field trip. We’ve made several previous trips to the lower levels on one errand or another, so we’re used to this sort of dismissal, yet today it seems as if everyone down here is moving just a little faster than usual. There’s a certain urgency in the air, as if they’re afraid of not meeting a deadline.

  The others notice it, too. “I haven’t seen anything like this since finals week at Cal Tech,” Russell says softly as we approach the corridor’s end. “Something’s going on.”

  “Think Chicago’s got something to do with it?” Shemp whispers.

  Russell gives him an arch look. “Son, you’ve got a talent for stating the obvious. Pasquale’s got something to do with everything.”

  But we all know what Shemp means. It’s been nearly six weeks since the last time anyone saw Mister Chicago. Anna changed the linens in the master bedroom only two days ago; she told me that his bed still hasn’t been slept in, nor were there any other indications that he had been there lately. Of course, this could mean nothing—4442 Garcia has three other habitats as large as this one, so there’s plenty of places for him to hide—but it looks like the master of the house has simply vanished.

  Shemp’s about to retort, but he’s cut short by Sam. “Look alive, folks,” he mutters, “Time for ‘Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.’”

  Mr. Rogers is Sam’s nickname for John, bestowed in honor of his fixed smile and kindergarten attitude. John stands next to an iris hatch marked Access AH-12; parked beside him is a hover-cart. A small pile of plastic-wrapped bundles lies in the cart’s bed.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” John beams at us from beneath his cowl: Fred Rogers as Rasputin the Mad Monk. “I’m so very glad to see you today. Are you feeling well?”

  “Aw, put a sock in it.” Shemp has learned that he can be as insolent with John as he wants, just so long as he isn’t disobedient. “What do you want?”

  John’s smile doesn’t flicker. “I have a very special job for you this morning, Christopher. Something you’ve never done before.”

  “Can you say ‘menial labor’?” Sam murmurs. “Sure you can…”

  “We have some very special friends arriving today,” John goes on, “and Mister Chicago would like you to greet them.”

  “‘Very special friends’?” Russell cocks an eyebrow. “Umm…where are they coming from, John? From off Garcia?”

  John’s smile falters a bit. “Yes, Russell, they are,” he says hesitantly. “They’ll be arriving very shortly on a vessel from somewhere else. They’re very important people, and we’re honored to be the ones chosen to meet them. We must take good care of them. Do you understand?”

  We exchange mute glances. It isn’t much info, but it explains a lot. VIPs of some sort. Not only that, but the first visitors to 4442 Garcia that we’ve heard about.

  “Before we go any further,” John continues, “each of us needs to don special garments. Your robes won’t be helpful where you’re going.” He gestures toward the wrapped bundles on the cart. “You also need to know that this job, while it isn’t particularly hazardous, requires special attention. You’re going to a place where you won’t weigh as much as you usually do. You may have a little trouble making your feet stay on the floor, which is why you’ll have to wear…”

  “Question.” Russell raises his right hand. “Are you trying to tell us that we’re going to a low-gee area of the colony? That’s the hub, isn’t it?”

  For a moment, John doesn’t know how to answer this. He hasn’t gotten used to the fact that some of his charges are now a little brighter than he is, and that a few of us can figure things out for ourselves. I have to pity him; a lo
ng time ago, he and Russ could have swapped equations over beer and pretzels. Now he’s just Mister Chicago’s majordomo, placed in the role of a waiter trying to discuss the finer points of French cuisine with a master chef.

  “Very good, Russell,” he replies, struggling to retain his mantle of authority. “You’re quite correct. You will be visiting the colony’s hub, where your mass…I mean, your weight…will be a little less than…”

  “Mass remains constant. Weight changes.” Russell isn’t letting John off the hook. A little comeuppance for all those bowls of chicken soup. “So far as I can determine, the radius of the colony is seven kilometers, with centripetal gravity at one-sixth Earth normal. It probably diminishes to one-tenth or less at the axial center…”

  “Want to translate that?” This from Shemp. I don’t say so, but I need a physics refresher myself.

  “What it means,” Russ says, “is that this could get a little hairy. We’re going to have to be very careful where we’re going. Take everything slow and easy. No fast moves, no sudden starts. Pick up your feet too fast and you might slam your head against something, and that could really hurt.”

  Shemp nods and shrugs. He’s beginning to dislike Russ about as much as John. Or me, for that matter; he still hasn’t quite forgiven me for punching him out a few weeks ago. Christopher Meyer may no longer be the fat kid everyone picked on at Country Day, but he’s still Shemp to one degree or another.

  “Russell is correct.” John’s back in Fred Rogers mode. “This is why you must pay special attention to what your associates tell you to do. They will be giving you instructions as we go along. If you follow them exactly, no one will have any difficulty.” His benign smile makes a reappearance. “In fact, I think you may even enjoy yourselves.”

  “Oh, boy.” Sam looks down and shakes his head. “Whenever he says that…”