by Tim Dennis
What's that got to do with it? Being a misfit?
Nothing. Never-mind. Go to sleep.
He lay there, catching glimpses of the light show through his window, thinking of Earthmen and pigs, letting his mind fill as his eyelids grew heavy. Allowing them to close he felt a presence.
Someone trying to contact you?
Ssh!
He lay still, listening.
Is that your mother? Open? Some thing's open? Did I leave the gate open?
She seems receptive to that...
OK. Some thing's 'OPEN' but it's not a gate.
Myles focused, trying to concentrate on his implant.
It should be sending more clearly defined ideas.
If it's the gate perhaps it's father.
It's not the gate, and it's definitely female, but there is a 'maleness' intruding.
That's a complex impression for an implant.
Myles felt his whole body flush, a warm feeling sweeping through his torso.
A hug. That's it. She's just saying goodnight. Say goodnight back.
The flush deepened and his pulse quickened. Myles hesitated, feeling a weight on his body and something new, a pressing, puncturing, pounding sensation. Waves of rhythmic pressure rolled up Myles's rag-doll body.
Oh good god no!
He opened his eyes and tried to break the connection.
End connection. Let go! Disconnect! Hello! Disconnect please!
He leapt from the bed, banging his head on a plastic model of Central Command suspended from the ceiling. "Shit! Shitshitshit!" He half-whispered/half-yelled as he danced around the room thinking, staring, calculating, anything to break the connection. The sound of a headboard knocking into a wall grew louder and more rapid.
Please – if there ever were a god this damn implant will disconnect now!
A surge of tingling halted his efforts to break the link. His left knee jerked. He hopped around in a circle three times, spasmed and relaxed, falling to the floor into a profound catharsis. A shuddering sigh at the far end of the hall marked the end of his current humiliation. Myles lay still, staring into the darkness.
As soon as I can get an appointment this damn implant is coming out.
5
"Feric will see to it the transition goes smoothly." Krykowfert said, standing again at the flat end of the long oblong conference table, the nine members and one empty seat of the Council of Ten arrayed before him. Brighter than for a public meeting, the chamber had been darkened enough to soften the cheapness of the build. No one had bothered with robes.
"Please don't see this as a disciplinary action," said Five from the opposite end. "In general, the Council is pleased with the success of your self-reliance initiatives, but it is feared that your preoccupation with locating the Eden planet has distracted you from the traditional responsibilities of your position."
Krykowfert took a moment to digest this, watching Councilor Six's face for any tells. It was certainly she who maneuvered this shift.
Councilor Five continued. "Councilor Six will absorb the Emergency Response Force into the Council Guard. Will you lodge any challenges to this?"
Krykowfert smiled, knowing he was right yet again. "No. Six is fully capable of managing the Emergency Response Force."
Six, deflated by the lack of argument, slumped back in her chair and set about ignoring the rest of the proceedings. Councilor One, the youngest and newest member of the Council, asked and was recognized.
"Is it wise, if I may ask Director Krykowfert, is it wise to give official sanction to the search for Eden? Surely this will only advance the cause of the religionists."
"It is not a religious search, the Council knows this." Several of the Councilors bridled at Krykowfert's barely contained contempt. "The planet is real, it appears in the Records of Transport."
"Many things appear in the Records of Transport," added Councilor Eight, "that does not make them true."
The tension in the room deepened. Councilor Five considered cutting the meeting short. Krykowfert beat her too it. "This is a tired argument." He said. "I will not waste the Council's time on it any further."
Before another question could be forwarded Five accepted Krykowfert's dismissal and closed the meeting. One and Eight stayed seated by way of formal protest but the others, Six included, rose from their seats. Krykowfert nodded acknowledgment to Five, avoided Six's glare and marched himself into the corridor.
He took a few steps towards the Rim Bar, then turned and ran for a closing elevator.
"Shield Guard offices." He ordered.
Instead of heading to his own office, Krykowfert diverted himself to the newly-Makered suite of rooms that had been provided to the Earthman.
"I understand it is customary to knock before entering." Said the Honored Guest.
"Yes, yes." Krykowfert rapped his knuckles of one hand on the wall while holding out his other to obscure his view of the naked Earthman's private parts. "It is also customary to dress for dinner, actually for most everything else as well."
"Have the Council agreed to listen?"
"Most of them have reviewed the material, or at least their clerks have. But that doesn't really matter. The Ripping technology is classified, and is only in use within the Eden Project, and I have complete authority over that. I've modified protocols- that's not important right now. I've come because the situation within the Council is worsening. I need your help."
At Krykowfert's continued insistence the Earthman dressed, allowing both to sit on the sofa at ease. "I have come only to advise," said the Earthman, "not to help. It is not appropriate for Earth to interfere with internal Legong affairs."
"This is survival, not some silly political disagreement. You have in your power the ability to open a safe passage between Legong and Eden-"
"Your planet has the resources to maintain its population here while you develop your own connections-"
"I have the resources. I, not we. And those resources are being bled away, wasted on redundant exercises and paranoid protections."
"But if you tell them this-"
"Damn it man, things may have changed on Earth, but this isn't Earth. I can't even get you a proper audience with these people."
"But your Council are only representatives of the people of Legong. Surely the people can decide these issues for themselves."
"It takes years, decades, to turn public opinion. You have to educate, letting people slowly absorb new information, we just don't have that kind of time." And with that Krykowfert stood and turned for the door. No goodbyes, no 'well discuss this later,' just his focused-yet-distracted march, the only way he knew how to walk.
6
Pig adjusted his cummerbund and matching bowtie. Satisfied, he stood proudly and turned to face Myles.
Myles's eyes snapped open with a speed and force leading one to expect an accompanying bang! Laying stiffly still he looked around the room. Finding no pig within it, he cautiously re-closed his eyes, opening them again a moment later. He lay still a few more moments, stealing glances around the room in case Pig returned. After sufficient time had passed he slipped out of bed, avoiding the hanging model of Central Command that he'd tangled with the night before.
Other relics of Myles's childhood decorated the room; more models and toys, mementos of school days and cycling images of himself as a child, his family, friends. Bento. His brother, Li, now had five boys of his own, growing up on a farm as he had done, except that for Myles and Li it had been a unique experience. Now settlements all over Legong had farms, or ranches or orchards, another result of Krykowfert's self-reliance initiatives. Li's kids wouldn't be 'different.' He searched for something to wear.
Didn't I leave something here last time...
He found something suitable and followed the smells of bacon and coffee down to the kitchen. It was empty. His father sat outside at one of the several picnic tables that occupied the near end of the farmyard. Two dozen Council Guards in neatly pressed brown u
niforms stood uneasily in the dirt around him. The one in the most elaborate tunic approached.
"Advocate Tugot?" She queried.
"Y-yes." Myles shot a glance at his father. Pa just shrugged.
"We're here for the rebuilding. The Council launched us-"
"Late." Myles interrupted. "The Council launched you late. As you can see, you're not needed. S.I. crews from Broad Plain have already been and gone."
Pa frowned at Myles's taking offense.
"Surface Infrastructure Division isn't equipped for this type of duty, Sir. We, the Council Guard, are needed to-"
"Do nothing?" Myles again cut her off. The delay in launch could have cost Myles his life, but that wasn't her fault. She was his age, maybe a bit younger, and he felt awkward being addressed as 'Sir.'
"Well," he said, softening a little, "Surface Infrastructure Division seems to have done the job anyway. You can all head back to Central Command." Myles left the Sergeant and her troops to decide for themselves, and said goodbye to his father.
"Oh. You're going?" Pa asked. "I thought there was something you wanted to talk about?"
Myles looked around at the Council Guard troops and wondered if any of them knew.
"I want to get back to my place. Maybe tonight, after the party."
The Cab that had carried the dead cow and not-yet-dead pig back to the compound the day before remained in the farmyard. Myles climbed into the open pod at its front, checking first to be sure the compartment behind was free of butcher residue. He grasped the master-bar and the Cab rose on its four feet. Myles suppressed his surprise, and as he walked it past the Council troops he instructed the Sergeant to hold a Skimmer for him at the beach. A quick wave to Pa and the Cab picked up speed, trotting through the break in the oaks.
"Don't forget the roast tonight!" Pa called.
Much of the gravel of the path had been replaced, and the fields were once again host to blissfully ignorant, and now dry, sheep. A Drop Capsule, just big enough for three and a Maker, had embedded itself in the sodden soil, landing hard enough to throw up a clod of grass and dirt. The next one Myles saw hung from the Jacarandas. Limbs and purple leaves littered the grass and the dangling Capsule blocked the gravel path. One tree survived, the other was only stump, bows and shattered branches. The Cab halted, accessed whatever data it required, and picked its way around the mess without Myles's help.
Two trees. Two damn trees in the middle of ten square kilometers of open field.
An uneventful Skimmer trip left Myles and his Cab on the narrow strip of beach that clung to the bottom of the sheer cliff that made up most of the Main Island's lagoon shoreline. Myles tried to look in control as the Cab picked its way through the arguing S.I.Div crews and Council Guards. The two teams had only one pier left to rebuild and the Council Guards wanted their chance. He drove the Cab on, across the beach and around to the more gradual slopes that led up to City Center, the blunt, bloated egg of steel and glass forced upon the landscape by the first wave of settlers to transfer from the nine surviving Arks to the newly designated surface settlements. In the centuries since, the inhabitants of Caldera's City Center had pushed outward, attaching balconies, projecting rooms and placing windows here and there along its surface, real, opening, see-through windows. To Myles it gave the impression of an infinitely old structure, pocked and scabbed, a stunted tree shedding its bark. Younger neighborhoods gathered around the base of City Center, multi-storied metal structures of the transitional generations, Colonists that felt secure enough to venture out of the displaced hunk of steel into lower and more open buildings. Still further up the hillside were the homes of Myles and his peers. Small, two-story pastel blocks laid out in terraces as the small plateau that supported City Center turned back into a steepening slope. He held the master-bar and concentrated, turning the Cab into his narrow lane, stopping at the yellow front door of his own mauve block.
Mauve isn't a pastel.
No one said it was.
No, but you said the neighborhood was pastel.
Myles went straight through the yellow door of his mauve home, unique in being the only non-pastel block in the row, and set to identifying which foodstuff in his kitchen was oldest, rankest or otherwise least palatable to humans. The competition was fierce. Myles placed a slimy sliver of meat on a plate and placed the plate on a rock by the back door. Whereas the Key of his parents' farm was low and green, Caldera proper, the Main Island, was upright and rocky, with scrubby vegetation scattered sparsely across its gravely slopes. Myles's section of it was marked off by a low Maker-ed wall, one in a string of back yards between this last row of houses and the steeper slope that led to the ridge crest. At the back of the lot, where the wall sat lowest, a ten-centimeter olive green lizard with dark red spots sniffed the air with its tongue. Myles sat quietly, waiting for the lizard to smell his meal when a stone whacked the wall barely a half-meter away from the creature. Myles leapt to his feet in time to catch the neighbor's seven-year-old boy duck and hide behind the garden wall.
Myles grabbed a fistful of gravel. "My-" Myles threw some gravel "yard-" throw-more-gravel "is-" gravel "a-" gravel "safe zone!" Out of gravel, Myles picked up a piece of the lizard's breakfast and hurled it, hitting the brat squarely in the face. The kid wailed pathetically enough to convince Myles his point was made, and he retrieved the comestible projectile, giving the budding psychopath a stern look before returning to the kitchen. A second examination of the room convinced Myles he possessed nothing but lizard food, so he headed back out to the narrow gravel lane in front and followed it away from the main road towards Harry's cafe.
Within a few hundred meters the lane joined with those from the other terraced neighborhoods into a single well-traveled Cab track running about a kilometer across a barren, pebbly wasteland to Harry's Cafe. Again Harry defied orders and stood out on his deck, this time dangling a rope over the edge.
Bento stood near the cliff's edge, outside the cafe. "Let it down!" She called to Harry, "slowly!"
Harry's line ran over the railing, suspending the plain, half-meter cube of an S.I.-grade Maker a few meters away from the cliff face. Two more lines stretched from the Maker to Bento. Myles watched as Harry lowered the machine and Bento swung it from side to side, its blue haze sweeping across the cliff face. Myles took a few steps closer, but kept well away from the cliff's edge.
"Can Advocates make public safety declarations?" Bento asked.
"I guess so." Myles said. "Why?"
"Because he wants to open," Bento said, "take advantage of the Council Guards before they head back to Central Command."
Myles looked down at the Guards on the beach, then up into the sky. There was an Earthman up there, and for some reason Krykowfert had thought Myles needed to know. Not the public, not the Advocate core in general. Just Myles.
Harry continued lowering the Maker as Bento spun it side to side, shutting it down only when it reached the beach below. "Pull it up!" Bento yelled to Harry, "I gotta get it back before it's missed."
Harry was surprised. "I thought you said-"
"Relax." Bento said. "No one's getting in trouble. But we're still officially in crisis and your cafe isn't on the priority list," and then, to Myles, "can you give Harry's place the thumbs up?"
Myles sighed, closed his eyes and concentrated. With Council Guards on the surface and extra S.I. teams from Broad Plain the circuits were unusually busy.
That's a good sign.
?
You're at least getting a busy signal.
"I can't get through." Myles said. "Too much traffic."
Bento grabbed Myles's head and leaned in, holding their temples together. "Try now." She said.
Her neck smelled warm and clean, Myles had even more trouble making the connection. He felt Bento's presence in his mind, followed by a forced connection with the local City Center grid. 'Now' he felt her say.
Together they got Harry's Cafe re-opened and when they broke apart Harry was standing there w
ith a plate of tarts. "Am I interrupting something?"
"Almond tarts?" Myles asked.
"Almond-" Harry looked askance at Myles. "Tarts." He considered asking Myles how he knew what almonds were and thought better of it. "They're nuts, grown on trees in Plateau. In the dirt. First harvest. Part of-"
"-Krykowfert's self-reliance initiatives." they all finished together. Myles took a bite, nodded approvingly and took two more tarts off the plate.
"Well, I gotta go." Bento hefted the Maker onto her shoulder and smacked Harry on the ass before heading out, leaving her current and former lovers alone with their tarts. Myles started to speak, Harry held up a hand to silence him and went back into the kitchen.
Myles stood in the empty cafe for a few minutes, then stepped cautiously onto the deck. Council Guards milled about on the beach. He looked up into the sky, searching for Central Command. Harry brought another plate of pastries.
"Harry?" Myles asked.
"Myles?" Harry hesitantly replied. He knew that tone of voice.
"Do you ever think about Earth?"
Harry took a suspicious step back. "How do you mean?"
"I mean, it's been four hundred years. Don't you think we'd have heard something?"
"If this has anything to do with you and Krykowfert, I don't want to hear it." Harry took another step back. Myles felt Harry's mind closing off and in a burst of panic he blurted.
"There's an Earth-man on Central Command. He's been there for two weeks."
Harry clenched his fists and grunted, then started pacing, glancing down at the Guards on the beach each time he reached the railing. "Don't tease, you know I don't like it when you do that."
"I'm sorry, I just had to tell someone."
"Tell Bento. I don't want to know."
"Bento's S.I., If she doesn't already know she might get in trouble."
