But as for saving something? He and LaNague would be at odds on that score. Broohnin wanted nothing spared in the final collapse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
You can see it in their eyes as they sit and move the levers that work the gears of the State. They look at you and know there really is a free lunch. And when they reach to tear off a piece of your flesh, do you bite the hand that feeds on you? Or do you, like so many of your fellows, ask if the maggot likes you rare, medium, or well done?
from THE SECOND BOOK OF KYFHO
A drop of blood formed at the puncture site after the needle was removed from LaNague's thumb. The technician dabbed it away and smeared the area with stat-gel to halt any further bleeding. “That should do it, sir. But let's just run a little check to make sure.” She tapped a few numbers into the console on her left, then pointed to a small funnel-like opening at the front of the console. “Put your thumb in there.”
LaNague complied and a green light flashed on the counter. “Works?”
The technician nodded. “Perfectly. You are now an official part of the Sol-System credit network.”
“I may not appear so on the surface,” LaNague said with a wry twist to his mouth, “but inside I am filled with boundless ecstasy.”
Broohnin watched the technician smile. It was a nice smile; she was a pretty girl. And LaNague's remark went right by her. Broohnin turned back to the huge transparent plate that made up the greater part of the outer wall of the way station. Earth hung outside.
The Lucky Teela had completed its last subspace jump ahead of schedule and had emerged north of the rotating disk of planets, gas giants, and debris that made up Sol System. The grain pods were deposited in orbit around Earth and the two passengers transferred to the Bernardo de la Paz, an orbiting depot for people and freight run by the Lunarians. People seemed to be scarce at the moment: except for a group of vacationers outward bound for Woolaville on the winter border of Mars’ northern ice cap, Broohnin and LaNague had most of the way station to themselves.
LaNague's first step had been to establish credit for himself before their descent to the planet below. He had given a pile of Tolivian ags to the station's exchequer official in order to establish a balance in Earth's electronic monetary system. The silver coins had been eagerly accepted, converted into Solar credits, and entered into the computer network. A coded signature device had been implanted into the subcutaneous fat pad of his right thumb with an eighteen-gauge needle. As long as his balance lasted, he could buy anything legally available on Earth. A light on consoles similar to the one beside the pretty technician would flash red when he exhausted it.
“Ingenious little device, wouldn't you say?” LaNague remarked, admiring his thumb as he joined Broohnin at the viewing wall. “I can't even feel it in there.”
Broohnin tore his eyes away from the planet below. “What's so ingenious? All I have to do is cut off your thumb and I'm suddenly as rich as you are.”
“They're ahead of you there, I'm afraid. The little device is sensitive to extreme alterations in blood flow…I imagine that's why they asked me if I had Raynaud's disease. Even a tourniquet left in place too long will deactivate it.”
Broohnin returned his attention to the view wall. As ever, LaNague was unflappable: he had already considered and discarded the possibility of someone cutting his thumb off. Someday, Broohnin promised himself, he would find a way to break that man. The only time he had been able to pierce the Tolivian's shield was when he had threatened his damned miniature tree. And even that was out of reach now in the quarantine section of the way station. But someday he would get through. Someday…
Right now he stood transfixed by the motherworld whirling outside the window.
“Think of it,” LaNague said at his shoulder. “Down there is where humanity first crawled out of the slime and started on its trek to the stars.”
Broohnin looked and saw something like a blue Nolevatol thornberry, mottled brown with rot and streaked with white mold. He wanted to jump.
LANAGUE'S THUMB WAS QUICKLY PUT to good use after they shuttled down to the Cape Horn spaceport. Their luggage was stored, a two-man flitter rented. It was only after they were airborne and headed further south that Broohnin realized the precariousness of his position.
“Think you're pretty smart, don't you?” he told LaNague. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“Your thumb. It makes you rich and me penniless. You're free to move, I have to follow. You wanted it that way.” He felt rage growing within him even as he spoke.
“Never thought of it, actually.” LaNague's face was guileless. “I just couldn't see opening two accounts when we're only going to be here for a day or so. Besides”-he held up his right thumb-“this is not freedom. It's the exact opposite. The Earth government has used these implants and the electronic credit network to enslave its population more effectively than any regime in human history.”
“Don't try to change the subject-”
“I'm not. Just think what that implant does to me. Every time I use it-to rent this flitter, to buy a meal, to rent a room-my name, the amount of money I spent, what I spent it on, the place of purchase, the time of purchase, all go into the network.” He thrust his thumb toward Broohnin's face. “And this is the only legal money on the entire planet! Coins and paper money have been outlawed-to use any leftovers is illegal. Even barter is illegal. Do you know what that means?”
Surprised by LaNague's vehemence, Broohnin fumbled for an answer.
“I-”
“It means your life is one big holovid recording to anyone who wants to know and has connections. It means that somewhere there's a record of every move you make every day of your life. Your entertainment tastes can be deduced from where you spend your leisure time, your sexual preferences from any devices you might buy, your taste in clothes, your favorite drink, your confidences, your infidelities!”
LaNague withdrew his hand and lay his head back into the upper portion of the padded seat. His eyes closed as he visibly relaxed. After a while he exhaled slowly but kept his lids shut, basking in the dying rays of the sinking sun as they played off the sharp planes of his face.
Finally: “If you really want, I'll set up a small credit balance for you when we get to the peninsula.”
“Forget it,” Broohnin replied, hating the meekness he heard in his voice. “Where are we going?”
LaNague opened his eyes. “I punched in a course for the South Pole, but we'll never reach it. They'll stop us long before we get near it.”
The flitter took them across Drake Passage, over the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and along the western shore of the Weddell Sea. The concepts of “east” and “west” steadily lost meaning as they traveled toward the point where even “south” held no meaning, where every way was north.
Darkness swallowed them as they cut through the cold air above the monotonous white wastes of the Edith Ronne Ice Shelf. When all around him had become featureless darkness, Broohnin finally admitted to himself that he was frightened. He doubted either of them could survive an hour down there in that cold and wind if the flitter went down.
“This was a stupid idea,” he muttered.
“What was?” LaNague, as usual, seemed unperturbed.
“Renting this flitter. We should have taken a commercial flight. What if we have a power failure?”
“A commercial flight wouldn't take us where we have to go. I told you before-I have to see this new protein source myself before I'll really believe it exists.”
“What protein are you going to find on an ice cap? Everything's frozen!” This trip was becoming more idiotic by the minute.
“Not everything, I'll bet,” LaNague said, craning his neck forward as he scanned the sky through the observation bubble. He pointed upward and fifteen degrees off the flitter's port bow. “Look. What do you think those are?”
Broohnin saw them almost immediately. Three long, narrow ellipses of intensely bright light hung in th
e black of the sky, motionless, eerie.
“How high you think they are?” LaNague asked.
Broohnin squinted. They looked very high, almost fixed in the sky. “I'd say they were in orbit.”
“You're right. They're in a tight polar orbit.”
“Orbiting lights?”
“That's sunlight.”
“By the Core!” Broohnin said in a breathy voice. He knew what they were now-mirrors. Orbiting solar reflectors were almost as old in practice as they were in concept. They had been used by wealthy snow belt cities in the pre-interstellar days to reduce the severity of their winter storms. But the advent of weather modification technology had made them obsolete and most of them had been junked or forgotten.
“I've got it!” he said. “Someone's melted enough ice to be able to plant crops at the South Pole!”
LaNague shook his head. “Close, but not quite. I doubt if there's enough arable soil under the ice to plant a crop. And if there were, I certainly wouldn't feel impelled to see it with my own eyes. What I've-”
The traffic control comm indicator on the console flashed red as a voice came through the speaker.
“Restricted zone! Restricted zone! Turn back unless you have authorized clearance! Restricted zone! Restricted-”
“We going to do it?” Broohnin asked.
“No.”
He fumbled with the knobs on the console. “Can't we turn it off then?” The repetitious monotone of the recorded warning was getting on his nerves. When the volume control on the vid panel did nothing to lessen the droning voice, Broohnin raised his hand to strike at the speaker. LaNague stopped him.
“We'll need that later. Don't break anything.”
Broohnin leaned back and bottled his growing irritation. Covering his ears with his hands, he watched the solar mirrors fatten in the middle, growing more circular, less ellipsoid. As the flitter continued southward, they became almost too bright to look at.
The cabin was suddenly filled with intolerably bright light, but not from the mirrors. A police cutter was directly above them, matching their air speed. The voice from the traffic control comm finally cut off and a new one spoke.
“You have violated restricted air space. Proceed 11.2 kilometers due south and dock in the lighted area next to the sentry post. Deviation from that course will force me to disable your craft.”
LaNague cleared the preprogrammed course and took manual control of the flitter. “Let's do what the man says.”
“You don't seem surprised.”
“I'm not. This is the only way to get to the South Polar Plateau without getting blasted out of the air.”
The cutter stayed above them all the way to the sentry station and remained hovering over their observation bubble even after they had docked.
“Debark and enter the sentry station,” the voice said from the speaker. Without protest, LaNague and Broohnin broke the seal on the bubble, stumbled to the ground, and made a mad dash through the icy wind to the door of the station. The sentry joined them a moment later. He was young, personable, and alone. Broohnin considered the odds to be in their favor, but LaNague no doubt had other ideas.
IT WAS MUCH ROOMIER in the cab of the sentry's cutter. Broohnin stretched out his legs and started to doze.
“Keep awake!” LaNague said, nudging him. “I want you to see this, too.”
Broohnin struggled to a more upright sitting position and glared at the Tolivian. He felt tired, more irritable than usual, and didn't like anyone nudging him for any reason. But his annoyance faded quickly as he remembered LaNague's masterful handling of the sentry.
“Are all Earthies that easy to bribe?” he asked.
There was no humor in LaNague's smile. “I wouldn't be surprised if they were. Those two coin tubes I gave him were full of Tolivian ags, and each ag contains one troy ounce of.999 fine silver. With silver coins, that sentry can operate outside the electronic currency system. The official exchange rate is about six solar credits per ag, but the coins are each worth ten times that in the black market. And believe me, Earth's black market is second to none in size and diversity.”
Broohnin remembered the way the sentry's eyes had widened at the sight of the silver coins. The man had looked as if he were about to lick his lips in anticipation. He had hardly seemed to hear LaNague as he explained what he wanted in return for the coins.
“Black market prices are higher,” Broohnin said. “Why bother with it?”
“Of course they're higher. That's because they've got something to sell. Look: all prices and wages are fixed on Earth, all goods are rationed. Whatever makes it to the market at the official price disappears in an instant, usually into the hands of friends and relatives of the people with political connections. These people sell it to black marketeers, who sell it to everyday people; the price goes up at each stop along the way.”
“That's my point-”
“No. You've missed the point. The price of a three-dimensional display module for a home computer is ‘X’ Solar credits in the government-controlled store; it's a fixed bargain price, but the store never has any. So what good is a fixed price? The black marketeer, however, has plenty of them, only he wants ‘doubleX’ Solar credits for each. It's an axiom of Kyfhon economics: the more rigidly controlled the economy, the bigger and better the black market. Earth's economy is run completely from the top, therefore there's hardly a thing you cannot buy in Earth's black market. It's the biggest and best there is!
“The black market here also means freedom from surveillance. You can buy anything you want without leaving a record of what, where, and when. Of course the sentry was easy to bribe. It costs him nothing to let us take this ride, and look what he got in return.”
The sentry had not come along. There was no need to. He had searched them for weapons and cameras; finding none, he had sealed them into the cutter and programmed a low-level reconnaissance flight into the craft's computer. The two out-worlders would get a slow fly-by of the area that interested them, with no stops. Anyone monitoring the flight would detect nothing out of the ordinary-a routine fence ride. The chance of the cutter's being stopped with the out-worlders aboard was virtually nil. The sentry was risking nothing and gaining a pocketful of silver.
The solar mirrors were now almost perfect circles in the night sky, intolerably bright. LaNague pointed to a soft glow ahead on the horizon.
“That's it. That's got to be it.”
The glow grew and spread left and right until most of the horizon ahead of them was suffused with a soft yellow haze. Suddenly they were upon it and in it and sinking through wispy clouds of bright mist. When those cleared, they could see huge fields of green far below them. A sheer wall of ice was behind them, swinging away to each side in a huge crystal arc.
“By the Core,” Broohnin said softly. “It's a huge valley cut right out of the ice!”
LaNague was nodding excitedly. “Yes, a huge circular cut measuring thirty kilometers across if my reports are correct-and they haven't failed me yet. But the real surprise is below.”
Broohnin watched as their slow descent brought them toward the floor of the valley. The fine mist that layered over the top of the huge manmade depression in the South Polar Plateau diffused the light from the solar mirrors, spreading it evenly through the air. Acting as a translucent screen, it retained most of the radiant heat. The valley was one huge greenhouse. Looking down, Broohnin saw that what had initially appeared to be a solid carpet of green on the valley floor was actually a tight grove of some sort of huge, single-leafed plants. Then he saw that the plants had legs. And some were walking.
“It's true,” LaNague whispered in a voice full of wonder. “The first experiments were begun centuries ago, but now they've finally done it.”
“What? Walking plants?”
“No. Photosynthetic cattle.”
They were like no cattle Broohnin had ever seen. A vivid bice green all over, eight-legged, and eyeless, they were constantly bumping into
and rubbing against each other. He could discern no nose, and the small mouth seemed suited only to sucking water from the countless rivulets that crisscrossed the valley floor. The body of each was a long tapered cylinder topped by a huge, green, rear-slanting rhomboidal vane averaging two meters on a side. All the vanes, all the countless thousands of them, were angled so their broad surfaces presented toward the solar mirrors for maximum exposure to the light…like an endless becalmed regatta of green-sailed ships.
“Welcome to Emerald City,” LaNague said in a low voice.
“Hmmmm?”
“Nothing.”
They watched in silence as the sentry's cutter completed its low, slow circuit of the valley, passing at the end over herds of smaller green calves penned off from the rest of the herd, held aside until they were large enough to hold their own with the adults. The cutter rose gently, leaving the valley hidden beneath its lid of bright mist.
“Didn't look to me like one of those skinny things could feed too many people,” Broohnin remarked as the wonder of what they had seen ebbed away.
“You'd be surprised. The official reports say that even the bones are edible. And there are more hidden valleys like that one down here.”
“But what's the advantage?”
“They don't graze. Do you realize what that means? They don't take up land that can be used for growing food for people; they don't eat grains that can be fed to people. All they need is water, sunlight, and an ambient temperature of 15 to 20 degrees.”
“But they're so thin!”
“They have to be if they're going to be photosynthetic. They need a high surface-area-to-mass ratio to feed themselves via their chlorophyll. And don't forget, there's virtually no fat on those things-what you see is what you eat. As each green herd reaches maturity, they're slaughtered, the derived protein is mixed with extenders and marketed as some sort of meat. New ones are cloned and started on their way.”
Broohnin nodded his understanding, but the puzzled expression remained on his face. “I still don't understand why it's being kept a secret, though. This is the kind of breakthrough I'd expect Earth to be beating its chest about all over Occupied Space.”
An Enemy of the State lf-1 Page 7
