Valencies: A Science Fiction Novel

by Damien Broderick

  Kael listened to the muffled strine twangs of the conspirators, and smiled. A billion stellar systems traced their ancestry to Old Australia, a hundred billion to Old China. But the ties were notional, abstract as the beasts you could see in clouds.

  So in the end it was the Closure itself that stood out as the principal determinant of human history.

  It passed bodies and the information in their heads, or encrypted and coded into their genes. A single world’s economy, founded on resource predation and the imposition of armed and financial might, discovered itself hurled into a constricted dimension where the sole transferable commodity was skill. Embodied information.

  Instead of becoming the center of industrial imperialism, Earth rose victorious as a mogul of data, information storage and processing, the scientific wellspring for the basic low-energy technologies which the new worlds needed before they could clamber up to takeoff .

  The key to the universe, Kael told himself wryly, is not mc2 it’s log2N. Ergs have given way to bits.

  The Empire, he thought bitterly, is the apotheosis of bureaucracy, cybernetic networks as their own justification. Its bearers have power, and honor, and more sensual gratification than they can shake a stick at, but theirs is not an imperialism of rapine or chauvinistic glory. It’s a universe made safe for science.

  §

  Theri moved her stiff shoulders against the cellar wall. Kael was nowhere to be seen. The voice of reason must have packed up and gone home, she thought irritably.

  Well, maybe you can’t blame him, this lot haven’t been too elevated tonight. She glanced at the pair of newcomers sitting in the far comer. What do they make of it?

  Anla had identified the black-haired boy when he came into the Death Shop, arm around the tubby red-haired girl. A pre-graduate from Curringal Basic Inlay—Con something or other.

  The randomizer had elected Dav as chair. Self-confident and watchful, the boy listened to him make his dogmatic assertions. The girl looked sideways at Con as if seeking confirmation of some point Dav was making. The boy caught her eye, shrugged noncommittally.

  Theri felt herself grimace. Dav was the prize example of Kael’s unsubtle visionless militant, one had to grant that much, and anyway his hair was so moldy, like tangled-up steel wool. Self-inflicted ugliness in the cause of morale-building social rejection.

  “Look, Dav, you listen to me.” Fed up, Lonek rose slowly to his feet: the only multi-centenarian in the cellar, faded tartan jacket splotched with old oil-stains, belly locked in a trial of strength with the waist of his kilt.

  Theri leaned back against the chilly spybeam-proof lining of the cellar and her eyes went involuntarily to Lonek’s left sleeve. Hidden by the tartan crisscross the hypnotic little biofluorescent numbers would be riding the tendons of his forearm.

  The sudden guilt of the spectator was sour in her mouth. She swallowed quickly.

  “The one thing that truly frightens people is death,” Lonek was saying. “Don’t talk to me about the consciousness of toilers, Dav. When we run those freighters out to the gas giants I talk to the real toilers every day, the men and women whose own lives hang on the thread of Imperial technology. They don’t talk much about autonomy, Dav, but they’re the closest to free human beings we’re likely to see until the new order is realized. They don’t like the prospects of being Millioned, so they’ve opted for the tough dangerous jobs that earn them exemption. And I’ve never heard one of them speak kindly of the military draft, or of the police actions on planets no one’s ever heard of except some data core on Earth. But I’ll tell you this, Dav,” he said more loudly, pressing over the attempted interruption, “every day I hear the same thing. ‘I’ve got a daughter fighting on Kurd.’ ‘My great-grand dad’s been called up.’ ‘My best mate is on Unilever.’ And every day they tell me, ‘We’ll do anything to help bring the troops back from MacGregor and Rezakhan and Lomwe and Malagasy and a thousand other bloodbaths, but if you take one step that will stop them from getting out alive we’ll dump you into space.’“

  The cellar was utterly silent. Theri shivered, hugged her arms against herself.

  “Do you imagine it’s any different for the people who work here in the munitions autofactories? They know they’re preparing stockpiles that could someday be used against themselves. Or the specialists who train the guerrillas, and those who code the viruses, and the ones who write the peptide-addresses that get the troops to those wretched worlds? When the Legates arrive here, Dav, the people who flock to the Teleports won’t be in any loyal, flag-waving mood.” He paused, shook his head in tired anger. “But let me assure you: if you want to guarantee the contempt and anger of every one of them, aimed right at your thick head, there’s just one thing you need to do—threaten their fighting kin.”

  Dav seemed to have calmed down a little during the centenarian’s weary outburst. “But Lonek, this is precisely the sort of ethnism the Empire depends on.” In a parodic tone he said: “‘These police actions will save Victorian lives.’ Or wherever the hell your family happens to be clustered at the time.”

  “It might have elements of ethnism, friend, but people everywhere think their own kind are more valuable than foreigners they’ve never heard of.”

  “Which is just the sort of thinking that revolutionary autonomism is meant to be struggling against. I tell you, the only course open to us—”

  A lanky technician, looking pained, cut in: “But as I keep saying, it’s a matter of tactics. Lonek’s right, we—it—”

  “Well, if it’s bloody tactics you’re after, Mart,” cried the chair, “just tell me what the tactics are for mobilizing opinion against the imperialists if we’re meant to continually refrain from expressing any solidarity with the Empire’s valiant dissidents because we don’t want to offend the people we’re trying to convince by saying what it is we’re trying to do because if we come out in favor of the rebels we’ll be alienating the false consciousness of...because...because...what are the tactics for that, Mart, what are the tactics for—”

  “Belt up, Dav, you’re raving.” Anla spoke sotto voce, from her commanding position perched on the fax-output. Everyone laughed. Dav spluttered to a halt, grinned slightly self-consciously and started again.

  “What I want to know is what is the point of—”

  “What you want to know is when to shut up.”

  Dav reddened, gaped at her.

  “Now you just listen to me.” She swung one booted leg. Con’s gaze, Theri noted with amusement, followed its arc. “When the Imperial Legates come in from Earth in several weeks’ time, we’ll have an opportunity handed to us that comes maybe once in fifty years. Are we going to seize that chance or sit on our arses theorizing? Our sole reason for being here is, tactically, to resist completely the prosecution of all current Imperial police actions and, strategically, to prepare the ground for the revolution that will make such wars impossible. And the thing to fight is the mega-society that compels such murders, which means first Imperial Earth and second the Victorians on this planet. But some of you don’t wish to offend public sentiment by creating a little havoc in the midst of the society that helps burn and poison our insurgent kin. Well, this is the most impotent bullshit I’ve yet heard around here. If it represents the boldest libertarian thought on Victoria we might as well all troop down and join the Imperial diplomatic service.”

  Theri watched Anla, cross-legged on the fax, and envied her scornful words. A single, heavy gold earring gleamed against the black mass of her hair; one arm lay languidly over the dumb bulk of the machine. Theri knew perfectly well that Anla had chosen the fax to give herself just the advantage of height, yet in no way did the premeditation lessen the effect.

  The silence lasted a few seconds; then Kael’s voice came dryly from above them:

  “You haven’t actually suggested any real course of action yet, Anla.”

  He had come quietly to the top of the stairs, the light from the open bolt-door immediately above his hea
d illuminating the periphery of his hair. His features were almost indistinguishable. Anla had to turn and crane her neck to see him. She looked at Kael for a second and then turned back to the rest of the meeting.

  “It’s obvious. Attack the Legates.”

  It should have been ringingly impressive. But if her words had the substance of a battle cry, their effect seemed curiously diluted. Theri sensed Anla’s unease at Kael’s somber presence perched a meter above her head. Her words seemed to defy not so much the Empire’s agents of coercion as those present in the cellar. A few more seconds of silence; the assembly waited for Kael to speak again. He said nothing. Dav, who had remained mute during Anla’s attack, found a chance of revival; he spoke peevishly:

  “There’s only one chance in one hundred and twenty-eight that they’ll come out at the Bolte Teleport, you know what indeterminacy does over distances of twenty-five billion light years, and anyway the facilities will be swarming with militia. Our job is—”

  Anla spun to face him, and the room crackled. Kael might be able to upstage her, but not Dav.

  “For fuck’s sake, it doesn’t matter how much real damage we do, or whether a Legate actually gets hurt. What counts is getting it through to Earth that its facilities, even in good old pacified Victoria, aren’t safe from attack. And a repressive response can only have the effect of radicalizing more and more people who would otherwise be snug in their false comfort. It might not be the start of the insurrection but it’s the most significant input we can provide at the moment.”

  Kael started to edge his way clumsily down the steps, bumping one step at a time on his buttocks. His face jolted into focus. He stopped almost level with Anla and a little to one side of her. Theri leaned forward quickly and started to say, “We shouldn’t assume—”

  Kael’s considered opinion came gently from halfway up the steps, easily over-riding Theri’s hesitant start. “It all boils down to the question of whether the short term issue of combating Victoria’s involvement in specific current police actions is compatible with the long term objective of creating a revolutionary libertarian situation on this planet, and if not, which has priority?”

  Theri sat back. Had he heard her start to speak? If so, had it occurred to him, even for a moment, to defer to her?

  The muscles of her back ached. She listened to Kael expounding: quiet, sensible man defining the parameters of a revolutionary situation. The professional educer, drawing out what we all know and structuring it after his own perspective.

  Material cannot be teleported through the Aorist Closure so the Empire must needs establish its armaments mechfabs on each separate world, each at its achieved level of technology. But its troops must come from outside, so the munitions works must be built around one or more of a planet’s Closures.

  To minimize the chances of successful attempts to enter such factories by means other than teleportation, they are located at Closures in arctic, inhospitable latitudes.

  Hence, effective insurgencies must be well-rooted in specific, extensive local grievances and supremely equipped for blitzkrieg against the munitions fortresses. Harassing a handful of plenipotentiaries from Earth on a state visit to open Parliament hardly constituted the focus for an armed uprising.

  Hmm. Can’t really see you at the barricades, Kael. Still, you seem convinced it’s a long way off. Just as well, eh? Not really a man for the lethal gas and the flare of gigawatt lasers. Not with immortality at stake.

  But that’s your dilemma, isn’t it, Socrates? If the blood and guts spread around in a revolution are obscene, so are the rotting bodies on Kurd and Lomwe. Either way it’s the ultimate obscenity in a universe of ruth immortality.

  Behind your cool, rational analysis, Kael, you’re making an emotional plea for parliamentary action—change society, boot out the Empire, all without bloodshed. Fine civilized values, Kael, my love; you’re the only person I know who could make them sound so gutless and sensible in the same speech.

  It just so happens, does it, that in promoting the distant liberation of Victoria we’re prolonging the star wars and so, albeit most reluctantly, we’ll just have to cool it for the time being and maybe get around to the revolutionary thing in a millennium or two?

  And here’s Anla bouncing back, saying what I’d say if I had her presence, accusing you of trying to have it both ways. Yet she’s wrong, of course, just as I would be wrong if I were saying it. The battles on Rezakhan and MacGregor and Kurd will be over long before there’s anarchy on Victoria, let alone Earth.

  She saw Ris untangle herself from her seat in the center of the cellar and pick her way towards the stairs, edging up past Kael.

  Theri followed her up to Shop level, inadvertently stepping heavily on Kael’s hand as she passed him.

  §

  A grundle dozed in a high place, ears glistening like folded insect wings. Outside, the scheduled night rains were falling.

  She scooped up the surprised Madam Brown and turned into the kitchen, where Ris was banging about with urn and mugs. The grundle started its industrialsound effects between her breasts. It was a relief; she felt nauseated with the sound of human voices.

  §

  There was no gain in continuing the debate, and besides, Ris would be coming down again in a few minutes with coffee for the conspirators. Thirsty work, overthrowing Empires. Rubbing his bruised hand, Kael went back up the steps. No Theri.

  “She’s gone, I think. Do you want coffee?”

  “Oh. No, thanks, Ris. Say good night to the bundles for me.”

  “See ya.”

  In the thin drizzle, Theri was nowhere to be seen. Probably bleeped a hitch. Kael decided to walk home, as usual, head thrust forward into the falling mist.

  A vague excitement of abstract dispute was still upon him. The world disclosed its multiplexed connections, humming with power, no single part of it unrelated to the rest.

  Personal safety, he thought, is predicated on impersonal surveillance. In a world where people genuinely cared for one another, it’d be possible to hitch-hike without mutual guarantees of safe conduct. Today, the issues of benevolence and personality have been transcended by the machines; technology gives us the benefits of community without the moral contact, the risk of disclosure. Possibilities for good and ill have been foreclosed.

  You punch your destination into the hitching system, the cybernet locates a bunch of commuters or cargo-vehicles going your way, one of their pilots responds to your call, you chat if you feel like it, get out, off it flies. If some psychopath fancies your coat or your body and proceeds with a quick essay in molestation, the cybernet has all the details set up in core. Crime does not pay.

  Gusts of winter wind tore at Kael’s hair; he squinted into the rain, hands deep in his pockets.

  Something had made her angry. Last time this had happened they’d been coming home from her awful parents’ place. Jesus of Nazareth in his shrine: the gold sphere resting in punctured hand, the other pointing to his pulsing, levitated heart, dripping blood, torn by vicious plaits of thorns. It seemed unlikely that the original Hebrew gentleman had green skin and blood-drenched tendrils. Theri had raved her blasphemies; the loon parents had glowered in the flickering fight of their barbaric icon. Theri and Kael had walked away from the place, eventually, to the public drop-space, her arm firmly around his waist. They’d trod the squares of a children’s chalked hop-scotch game. On the glaze of a retail fuel-cell recharger faint words were scratched: Beddoe loves Corris. Kael had spoken quietly: “You lose your cool with your father, don’t you?”

  “Bloody halfwit.”

  “Why don’t you talk to him rationally, it’s useless to let him needle you like that.”

  “What would that old bigot know about anything, he’s so fucking stupid.”

  “So are you when you talk to him, you carry on like an articulate cretin.”

  “Well why don’t you ever bloody say anything if you’re so bloody clever?” she’d cried. “Every bloody time w
e go round there you sit on your chair like a tongue-tied...like a tongue-tied—”

  “—mentally defective genetic disorder in a catatonic trance?”

  “Yes, fuck you, that’s just how you look, sitting there staring at those hideous saints as if they were bloody works of art. And there’s no need to look so fucking smug just because you’re better at dreaming up invective than I am. At least I open my mouth and don’t just sit—”

  “It’s about the only bloody time you do open your mouth, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “You never talk at the Alliance meetings you’re so fond of attending. You never argue constructively with me or Anla or the rest of us. You come back from tertiary complaining about the dreary tutorials, but have you actually said anything yourself to liven them up? No, because everyone else was being so dreary it was beneath your dignity to open your highly intelligent gob. The only time you get round to committing yourself is when you’re abusing your dumb bloody father. And then you talk like an imbecile. You ought to learn to argue constructively, and to exercise a bit more restraint and charity with—”

  “You...you...you’re becoming a real bloody fourteen carat gold educer, Kael, aren’t you? So you’ve condescended to read me a little homily so that I can rectify such defects in my character as you, in your wisdom, have seen fit to...to call to my attention? That’s really very good of you, Kael, how would you like me to expiate my sins? A whipping in front of the shrine like that arsehole back there? Sanctimonious gutless bloody pig!”

  “Who, me or your father?”

  “Both of you, fuck you, I’m sick to tears of having my life ordered by pompous, self-righteous deadshits.... Fuck me! ‘Restraint and charity’ and lectures on character improvement! Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare touch me!”

  Kael released Theri’s shoulders from his tentative embrace; she spun on her heel and marched off, savagely punching a bleeper code on her library. She got it wrong and cursed and started again. Kael ran after her.