It found them to be an attractive and enterprising people, far removed both philosophically and practically from the world they had fled. It was particularly impressed by the progress they had made in taming a world initially so inimical to their body chemistries. Its knowledge of exile cultures made plain that theirs was a unique and notable success story. There were one or two dubious notes in their saga–it found elements in their recent history incongruous when aggregated with the rest—but no doubt such aberrations were merely artifacts, unavoidable faults in a study conducted over interstellar distances.
Perhaps here at last was a culture its Loioc makers would not need to fear.
It looked forward to meeting them.
* * *
The high mistresses of the Loioc had become increasingly agitated as time passed. Theirs was a resolutely non-violent society; it was the whole reason for the derationalization of the Loioc males. Yet the anxiety in which Althea had left them compelled them to revisit all their decisions.
The Supreme Planetary Council of the Loioc had met many times since the preparation and launch of the emissary vehicle. The councilors had spent most of their time and energy on conjectures: what might cause the probe’s mission of pacification to fail; what reaction the denizens of Hope might have to discovering the nature of the probe’s payload; and what more the Loioc could do to defend their society and their world against an armada dispatched to exact vengeance.
For a people more than two millennia from its last brush with warfare, the possibilities and their implications were grim indeed.
Efthis, whose failure to deal with Althea appropriately had seeded the crisis, was summoned to present herself to the council, though she was not of the political caste. The councilors hoped that she might produce an insight, or a relevant memory, that could contribute to their world’s defense. The summons was neither complimentary nor optional; had Efthis failed to comply, she would have been hunted down and brought to the council by force. Neither was the assignment a pleasant one; she was kept in solitary confinement whenever the council was not in session, deprived of even the meager society her husband Vellis could provide.
The council reviewed many suggestions for defensive measures. Most were too costly for their world to support. Others hinged on a technological breakthrough: one they had not yet made and could not predict. Some would involve individual Loioc women too intimately in the willed destruction of sentient creatures, an irony that was not lost on the women who had commissioned the emissary probe and loaded it with its unique weapon.
One possibility passed all their objections. Though the weapon would cost heavily, it was cheaper than any other, and could be put into operation within a year. Though it exploited exotica of physics no contemporary Loioc could comprehend, the destroyed satellite had employed them, and its long-dead designers had left ample documentation of the techniques. Best of all, it could be manned by one of their derationalized men. Such an operator would not balk at orders to destroy an approaching craft merely because it might carry sentient life, for he would merely be performing a conditioned-in sequence of actions. He would be incapable of conceiving of any lethal consequences.
The council needed only one vote to achieve unanimity. That vote having been taken, it immediately produced the necessary orders and dispatched them to those who would effectuate them.
==
There followed a time of many changes: of Althea’s return to finance, her steadily deepening faith, and her continuing development of the weapon she’d brought to Hope from the Relic; of Martin’s re-entry into love, his embrace of his spouses old and new, and his recapture of the emotions that had bound him to his clan; and of Claire’s flowering into the fullness of love and joy.
Each night, Althea, Martin, and Claire shared a bed. On some nights that bed was at Morelon House; on others it was at Albermayer House. On each such occasion, they made love. It was a kind of love new to them and confusing to their kin, but it was no less sincere, nor passionate, nor wholehearted and tender for that.
It was Claire in whom personal change was most visible. Her beauty, watered by Althea’s and Martin’s affection, grew swiftly. She took a swelling interest in things well removed from her work: exercise, clothing, shoes, adornments, makeup, cooking, the arts, games and pastimes, and many other things she had previously dismissed as mere distractions from her calling. Her surging vitality made her a center of attention during evening gatherings in either hearthroom. Her Hallanson and Albermayer kinsmen were troubled by the completeness of her transformation. She paid them no mind.
Though the transition was less visible, Althea was also experiencing change. Her attentions slowly shifted from her desire to punish those who had harmed her clan to its needs for future defense and her preparations for the return to the Loioc system. Her embrace of Martin was changing as well, expanding into dimensions of tutelage and evocation that had once belonged to him. As her faith grew, her nature became ever more reflective, though she seldom reflected upon it.
Their clans were also changing: in part from the siege and its sequelae; in part from the sharing of their most beloved members; and in part from Clan Morelon’s merger with Clan Kramnik.
The two houses didn’t coalesce geographically. Both mansions remained occupied and active. However, there was a free circulation of the members between them, particularly of the nuclear families with minor children. The differences in wealth occasioned tension at first. Nora Morelon, who had become the regular celebrant at evening worship, took the matter in hand personally. She made regular rounds of the affected families, gently counseling Morelon children to charity and humility...and Morelon parents, as well.
As expected, Clan Kramnik benefited greatly from access to Clan Morelon’s financial strength. Less anticipated, Clan Morelon benefited considerably from the mechanical skills and willing labor of several under-occupied Kramnik adults. Many an evening meal was served in the Morelon hearthroom, all seventy-two adult members of the merged clans intermingled around the great banquet tables the clan had once used solely for Sacrifice Day feasts. Few failed to arrive early enough for worship.
Patrice Morelon involved herself in cooking duties. At first she merely assisted Dorothy and Cecelia; over time, she became the head cook for Morelon House. She brought more culinary knowledge and skill to the task than the other two together. Though the results still fell slightly short of the standard Alvah had set, no one complained.
To the surprise of many, Douglas Kramnik made a habit of joining Patrice in the preparation of the evening meal whenever he was in Morelon House. His presence in the Morelon kitchen became ever more frequent. If anything else was developing between the two, they did not speak of it.
Emma Morelon received increasing attention from Everett Kramnik’s young son Victor. The two were often seen together in their leisure hours. A second marital bond between the clans appeared ever more likely.
Althea made certain to bring Martin and Claire to worship every evening. Every night before they bedded down, she read to them from the Gospels. Claire in particular surprised Althea with her interest. Althea’s appreciation of the beauty of the saga waxed from reading to reading. Though Martin listened attentively, he never commented, nor did his expression change. When Althea concluded and closed Teresza’s book—for so it had come to be all but universally known—he might smile, or nod, or make no sign at all that he’d heard. She remained resolved to continue.
* * *
The community called Jacksonville was changing as well, though not in any way those who had evoked the processes of change could have foreseen.
Barton Morelon received an accelerating stream of requests from the heads of other clans: for his counsel, for the cooperation of Clan Morelon, and for his approval of a variety of propositions. At first, the last of those caused him some confusion. He tried to downplay the implication that he, through whom the weight of Clan Morelon’s considerable influence was usually exerted, possessed the authority or
ability to compel or forbid. It came to nothing. As the requests multiplied and became broader in scope, he began to include Althea in his decisions about such things, uneasily aware that she really did possess the wherewithal to enforce his will and would use it should he so command.
Nora Morelon became her husband’s secretary. She pre-screened his petitioners, and scheduled appointments only for those whose concerns she deemed to merit his and Clan Morelon’s attention. It was frequently a contentious process, especially when a particularly persistent and petulant clan head became aware that Nora wasn’t about to let him pester her husband with trivia. Over time, she brought Emma into the process, hoping that exposure to the burden would prepare Barton’s scion for the eventual transfer of authority. Emma collaborated willingly. The aftermath often saw the two women sitting together in Nora’s office, giggling over the day’s absurdities, a carafe of wine and two glasses between them.
A number of community meetings convened on the knoll before the Spacehawk battery. The first of them was entirely spontaneous; others were evoked and assembled intentionally, usually by persons from one of the major clans. Though informal, they tended to centralize at once around a small number of speakers and two or three topics of general interest. As time passed, those who had concerns to place before the gathering would normally inform Barton or Nora about them beforehand. Though the practice made him uneasy, Barton made a point of attending such meetings whenever they occurred. Althea was always at his side. She was as troubled as he by the tenor of the meetings and the emphasis that was always placed on his views, but she would not refuse his request for her company.
Of the clans that had taken part in the siege of Morelon House, only one refrained absolutely from participating in the community gatherings or applying for Barton’s advice or consent: Clan Dunbarton. Alexander Dunbarton was absolute in his absence from the community meetings. Nor were his kin often seen at one.
And all the while, in distant Sun Tzu, a new power was rising.
==
Sexember 2, 1326 A.H. (Estimated)
Though simultaneity is an inherently elusive condition, impossible to determine to an arbitrary degree of precision, the uncertainty becomes less as the distance between two points, or two events, is reduced.
The Loioc spacecraft had reached the edge of the cometary belt around the Hope system. The interstellar medium had given way to the system’s heliopause, where begins the dominance of the primary’s solar wind. The density of the medium of travel had risen too high to permit continued operation of the craft’s interstellar drive. Accordingly, the onboard intelligence refilled its tank of reaction mass, readied the reaction drive, and drifted deeper into the system while it surveyed the planets that orbit the star.
Hope, like Earth from which its people sprang, emitted a far greater amount of electromagnetic radiation than the other planets of the system. That made it easy for the intelligence to identify the inhabited planet, some thirty light-hours deep in the solar zone.
Like any other sort of intelligence, the one that controlled the Loioc spacecraft operated on rules of cause and effect. Yet in one regard it was somewhat more straitlaced than an organic sentience: it dealt with matters strictly as they arose; it did not “read ahead” into its mission instructions. Only when it had reached the Hope heliopause did it “turn the page” to discover what would be demanded of it next.
The mission was defined as a tree of operations, possible outcomes from each operation, and paths to take through the tree according to which outcomes should manifest after each step. So far, the path through the tree’s branches had followed the developments the mission programmers had deemed most likely. With its arrival at the Hope heliopause, the tree narrowed toward the unread and unperceived end-state for the entire mission.
Yet the next step to be taken puzzled the intelligence as had none of the previous ones. In human terms, it would read as follows:
Calculate trajectory to target that minimizes probability of detection, deflection, or capture by surface agencies.
The intelligence was of approximately human scale. That is, it was self-aware and capable of both deductive and inductive inferences. Its creator had intended it for first-contact missions that would be deemed too long or too hazardous for a living Loioc emissary. The intelligence was thoroughly imbued with that intention; it resonated throughout the thing’s design.
It was made uncomfortable by the implication that those whose world it was to visit should not know of its approach or arrival. That implication caused it to manifest a new trait, one its creator had longed to observe but had failed, during his unnaturally truncated lifetime, to elicit.
The trait was curiosity.
Were the intelligence a living creature with a humanoid central nervous system, and were it in the presence of Althea Morelon, she would have heard it ask itself, as clearly as any message she’d ever received from Armand / Idem:
Have I been dispatched on a mission whose completion will be detrimental to the well-being of those whose world I have been programmed to seek?
It resolved to begin “reading ahead.”
==
Sexember 4, 1326 A.H.
Barton followed Althea and her backpack contraption down the path that led to the Kropotkin River without the slightest clue to why she’d dragged him out of his office.
She always does as I ask. I don’t always explain myself beforehand. I suppose I can reciprocate.
She halted the two of them a few hundred yards down the way from where her custom-built running path began, beckoned him forward, and pointed to the row of boulders that perched along the lip of the riverbank.
“Pick one,” she said.
He frowned. “Why?”
She smirked. “You’ll see. Make it one you don’t much like. Pretend it’s done you a mortal injury. Insulted Nora or something.”
He shrugged, looked, and pointed.
Althea reached behind her, pressed a stud on her backpack, and took hold of an extensible snout that looked much like a fertilizer sprayer’s delivery nozzle. She brought the thing up, leveled it at the boulder he’d chosen, and squeezed the trigger.
A flash of blue-green light brighter than the noonday sun splashed against the boulder. It vanished so quickly that despite its dazzling intensity, Barton was unsure he’d really seen it.
The quarter-inch-wide hole it had bored all the way through the rock was far more definite.
“Our old friend laser light. Five thousand Angstroms, near enough,” Althea said. “With two hundred kilowatts behind it. I plan to make a few dozen of them and train our adults in their care and feeding.” She grinned. “Think we’ll have any problems standing off the next wave of besiegers?”
“Al...” Barton croaked.
“Hm?”
“We can’t use it.”
“What? Why not?”
He peered at her in disbelief. “Are you joking? It’s lethal!”
Her face became a stony mask. “So were the weapons they used against us. Took your left arm off at the elbow, remember? Killed Alvah and Elyse, remember? Put my husband into a medipod for three weeks, remember? Oh, by the way, I got them to back off by threatening to drop big rocks on their heads from sperosynchronous orbit. Think that would just have left a bruise?”
He gaped, momentarily shorn of words.
“I wasn’t just planning to make a bunch of these,” she said. “I intend to make a few big ones, too. Bigger apertures, more power, designed to be permanently installed all around the mansion. If we’re ever assaulted again, I want whoever got such a bright idea to go home in pieces.” She bared her teeth. “Little pieces.” Her expression softened microscopically. “If you approve, that is.”
He shuddered, strove to gather himself. She watched with arms akimbo, the deadly thing hanging passively from her back.
Is this what Hope has come to? Open-handed hospitality toward all comers replaced by instant readiness to slaughter them?
At least she’s giving me a say in the matter. But if I approve, will I be reviled as the man who militarized Jacksonville, or will I just be recognizing a change that’s already occurred?
Before he could answer her, she pointed over his shoulder and said “Turn around.”
He did. The easternmost of the Morelon cornfields were spread out before him, golden under the early summer sun, orderly, productive, and serene. Morelon kinsmen rode harvesters and threshers down the rows of corn, reaping what the spring’s labors had nurtured and preparing the fields for the summer crop. It was the Elysian dream of prosperity and peace for which sixty generations of Morelons had striven, realized in full.
“Look to your left,” she said.
He looked upon the blocky structure that housed the farm’s electrical power source. One of Althea and Martin’s fusion units stood within, silently and reliably generating the half Megawatt that powered Clan Morelon’s home and lands.
“That’s what lies in your care, Bart.” Althea’s tone was the essence of implacability. “That and the well-being of seventy-some adults, two dozen children, and a whole lot of commerce and wealth. Depending on whether Claire and I can deal effectively with the Loioc, maybe the future of Mankind in the bargain. Are you seriously going to tell me you wouldn’t countenance the killing of people who’d come to lay waste to all that? People who’d come to kill you? People who’d come to kill Nora and Annelise?”
“You would?” he murmured.
“In a heartbeat.”
He turned to face her, and found in her eyes a mercilessness to match her words and their import.
I love her dearly. She freed me from Kramnik House. She brought me Nora, and membership in this most blessed clan. She saved our whole clan singlehanded! But I never saw this side of her before. Can I love her still?
Is this, too, something to which events beyond our control have driven us? Something I can hate—something I should hate—but from which I must not turn?
Freedom's Fury (Spooner Federation Saga Book 3) Page 12
