He was also reeling from the discovery he had little influence over events unfolding across the planet and in the vast stretches of the galaxy between Skid and the offworld. There were many activities underway he had little knowledge or control of. These were mostly being managed by the MPU for the benefit of Bruce, and the Transcendents.
He now understood this had been the case for every Chief Mati, all the way back to the first Mati who, according to legend, had emerged in a more primitive time to lead Skid to greatness. This mythical figure would have started life on the offworld planet which meant the accepted version of the Skidian people was a complete fabrication. It was a devastating discovery he chose to keep to himself for the time being, because he felt it would destroy the self-esteem of the remaining indoSkidian population.
Lake would have taken temporary refuge at The Farm, but recently it had become overrun with offworlders. Bruce had established The Farm when he had first arrived on Skid, and then Lake and some of his key followers had, they liked to think, enhanced the community once Bruce had left. The Farm was Lake's second home, away from this office and his official residence, but now it wasn’t the same place, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
He was also annoyed by the odd assortment of people who had started to turn up on the planet unannounced. Lake had first become aware of these new arrivals when they were mentioned in daily digests of population movements. Some of them landed and were picked up by Trev, one of Bruce’s helpers. Others stumbled into small communities of Skidians living on the fringes of Sietnuoc, giving them a hell of a fright in the process.
These offworlders came from the MFY dormitory and were completely disorientated when they arrived. Some of them thought they were bound for a place called Mars, so Skid was an unwelcome surprise. Once they were dispatched to The Farm, they all recognised ex-President Mitchell and were astonished to find out he was still alive.
The first few offworlders materialised randomly on the surface of the planet, but after a while, something changed and later arrivals materialised close to The Farm and were quickly gathered up by Trev, who evidently was alerted to their arrival.
Bruce had unilaterally decided The Farm would be a refuge for Mitch. Lake opposed this, because Mitch had once conspired with the renegade Eduid to invade Skid, an invasion Bruce put down single-handedly. Mitch’s presence was a significant pain point for Lake, perhaps the biggest one, because it was a true indication he wasn’t fully in control of his own destiny.
Lake knew the only reason Bruce had anointed him supreme ruler of Skid was largely because Bruce didn’t want to be directly involved in the governing of the planet himself and this was the only way he could avoid taking on that responsibility. Bruce had made this clear on numerous occasions, and restricted his visits to the planet, so that the locals could get on with governing themselves and running the re-population effort. However, it suited Bruce to meddle when he had the inclination, without any form of consultation.
Lake found this behaviour particularly frustrating because Bruce often treated Skid as his personal fiefdom. The random interventions when Bruce implemented changes or invited people to the planet without letting him know, made Lake feel he wasn’t valued. Lake felt Bruce should at least ask for permission if he wanted to make any significant changes or interfere in the day to day running of the planet.
The slow realisation that he had never had been in control and his position was merely ceremonial had struck Lake like a physical blow.
Even so, most Skidians still looked to him to settle petty disputes. In all honesty they had few real grievances, given they lived in a society with almost limitless resources at their fingertips. Their every need, and most wants, were met without the expenditure of any effort. Their biggest issue was they were change-averse, still clinging to the old ways. If he attempted to introduce any new initiatives or otherwise stamp his authority, he was largely ignored.
He had only survived this long because he was part of the small community of dissidents who had been banished to The Farm by the last Chief Mati and had learned how to harvest organic food under the tutelage of Bruce.
Once he became Chief Mati, Lake had access to official archives and made many discoveries about his people he would rather not have known. They weren’t the original Skidians and far from being the architects of the most technologically advanced civilisation in the universe, in most respects they didn’t understand any of it, let alone control it.
Now life had returned to a new normal, it was impossible to get all but a handful of Skidians to maintain their involvement with the organic farm. Most Skidians saw no need to do anything that got their hands dirty, and this concerned Lake. But something told him real change was in the air. None of them were in control of their destiny, despite what they believed.
He wished he had someone he trusted to turn to for help. He should have been able to rely on the senior members of the senate for advice. He recalled his father had often been called upon by senior senators, and even the Chief Mati of the day, from time to time.
Today a handful of the original Senators survived but Lake could never bring himself to ask them for advice. There had been a solution to the famine staring the old senate in the face, but all the members had put their own self-interest ahead of the needs of the wider population, largely because they believed the famine would not affect them.
There weren't enough Skidians to fill half the seats in senate. The hardy souls who had answered the call barely filled a couple of rows of the vast chamber. They pretended to debate issues seriously and made important-sounding pronouncements that were ignored by all and sundry, including Lake. They held endless committee meetings, which achieved precisely nothing. Lake could turn to none of them for guidance. Not one of the survivors had the intellectual horsepower he needed.
Lake felt the sole purpose of this self-appointed group was to boost their own self-esteem and preserve the old institutions. The practices held no meaning: they were perpetrated solely because they were deemed to be culturally significant, with no consideration of relevance. But who did the senate think they were preserving this circus for?
At the current reproduction rates, there was no hope of re-populating the planet to pre-famine levels. They would be lucky to maintain a viable population. The novelty of discovering they were able to have sex whenever they wanted to had now worn off, and Skidian women were now going out of their way not to have children. They had discovered it was a tough job bringing them up, even with the assistance of maternal care units.
Previous generations of Skidians had been mostly gestated in special birthing tanks, emerging as fully formed adolescents into a world almost devoid of young children and the very old and infirm. These gestation tanks hadn’t come back online yet and Lake didn't know why. It was the ideal solution to the problem of physically raising children for many of the indoSkidian women.
The Skidian Way had to be changed. If there was no transformation in Skidian behaviour and attitude, it would be the death knell for the Skidian race. This was a useful topic of conversation for the senators to debate, but it was impossible to get them to take the subject seriously, let alone come to a decision.
Lake had attempted to mount a population replenishment expedition to the offworld planet. But of all the destinations in the universe, this once rich source of resource was now off limits to Skidians. It could be the offworlders now knew they were not alone in the universe and had become more vigilant. It had taken them long enough. Patrol craft had been operating with impunity close to the offworld planet since time immemorial.
But now the craft under Lake's command were unable to approach the planet. Furthermore, since the last recorded Skidian expedition by Myfair, who was keeping his side of the bargain by remaining on the offworld planet, a large asteroid had mysteriously swung into orbit around the planet.
Lake wondered if this was the work of the real Skidians, the Transcendents, who even he, with access to all th
e archived material on Skid, knew little about. He was no expert, but he was pretty sure the asteroid hadn't materialised by accident. It confirmed there were forces at work on and off Skid that he knew nothing about, causing him further frustration.
Bruce had left him to govern as he saw fit, but he sensed his understanding of what this really meant had changed. He contacted Bruce, who would usually give him a response, but Bruce was evasive on any questions connected to the asteroid, Lake’s inability to mount a mission to the offworld planet, and the unusual incidences of random, bemused and often angry offworlders arriving unannounced on Skid. Bruce was up to something, he was sure of it.
At least Bruce had said that he would visit after his wedding and bring Lake up to date on his latest thinking.
“Do you want to come along?” Bruce had asked him.
But, Lake wasn’t sure what a wedding was. It smacked of an offworld custom or ritual he wanted no part of, so he declined the invitation.
In the interim, he resolved to instruct the MPU to remove the contraceptives from the food supply again to ensure Skidians produced enough offspring to at least maintain current population levels. He had recently given in to a delegation who had caught him at a vulnerable time and agreed to introduce the contraceptives because the women found they were continually pregnant and wanted a break. He wasn’t sure what else he could do to increase the population to a sustainable level.
Eleven
Ronald D Chump. President Ronald D Chump, Ronald reminded himself. He raised his arms in triumph, his palms held upward. He flipped his hands up and down a few times, encouraging the crowd to cheer louder and more wildly, with greater abandon. He pumped his arms in time to the cheers of his adoring fans, inspiring further applause, and chants of ‘Make America great again!’ He basked in their adulation, like a toothy old walrus lying on the beach in the sun.
He tilted his head to one side and smiled his special smile. It was the smile he reserved to show people how happy and successful he was. He thought it was natural people should be pleased for his success, how he was happier, more successful, and far richer than most of his audience could ever be. It was also the smile he used to inspire people to believe they too could be rich and successful, if they followed a few simple rules and worked hard.
What most people really saw when Ronald smiled was a smug self-satisfied smirk. His detractors, and there were many, wondered if Chump ever looked in the mirror when he was dressing in the morning. Commentators wondered if he was aware how unappealing and conceited he appeared when he put this expression on display. Others saw this as more evidence he was suffering from dementia and could no longer tell the difference between good and bad, right, and wrong.
The truth of the matter was Ronald simply didn’t care and ignored any advice his media advisors gave him to behave with a little more humility because he knew better.
“This launch is going to make..” He paused to wait for the cheering to die down to a level where he could hear himself think. He knew this was a very important speech about how great America was going to become, and he had to get it just right. “This is going to be a very great mission to Mars, a very great mission indeed. We are going to do wonderful things on Mars...”
“Now, Ronald,” General Smith chided him gently, “please don’t deviate from the speech we prepared for you. Firstly, this is a very important international mission to the asteroid Automedon, not Mars. If this mission is successful, Mars comes next.” General Smith knew the launch would fail but Chump didn’t need to know. Chump just needed to do what he was told, when he was told, and understand punishments would be meted out if he didn’t.
The problem was Chump wasn't used to being told what to do. He had always been a bully and belittled anyone with the temerity to get in his way, and he had almost always got away with this behaviour.
For an extremely large man, he had tiny feet, and small hands, with very short, stubby little fingers. His fingers were so short, they could almost be considered a deformity. But these physical defects didn’t prevent him from using his imposing size to intimidate people of lesser stature. When this didn’t work, he simply threatened legal action to get his way. None of these attributes prevented people voting him into the highest office in the land and making him the single most powerful person on the planet. Or so they believed.
He had campaigned on the back of his business acumen and vowed to use this ability to bring some sense to national politics and decision making. The truth was he had squandered a very significant inherited fortune on bad business deals. His salvation had come in the form of a young attractive wife who had access to limitless funds from a mysterious Eastern European family. Until he had entered politics, encouraged by his wife, first to the senate, and then campaigning to become President, he had allowed his name to be used to adorn a string of hotels, casinos, and apartment blocks. While his public persona suggested he was in charge of the business, his wives had been very insistent he not be involved in the day to day management of this enterprise and encouraged him to concentrate on his political career.
Chump was surprised how General Smith knew more about his wife’s family than he did - a lot more. This had become another lever for the General when he wanted Chump to do something which ran counter to Chump's political principles. Since the General had gained full access to his phone and contacts, something Chump's wife was blissfully unaware of, Chump's life had never been the same.
It wasn’t just the Eastern European connection. The drugs, and the other women he was seeing in a very special, very secret establishment in Washington were also levers for the General to pull. The ability of the General to use this information to force Ronald to do his bidding had taken most of the gloss off his election win.
Much of the time he still got away with saying and doing whatever he wanted to. But when General Smith or the witch who was his deputy said jump, he had to jump, and they made a game of making him ask how high.
So far, he had delivered on a few of his minor election promises, but he had confounded the entire voting public with complete back-flips on issues ranging from gun control to immigration, from taxation to health care reform. The American dream he had been elected to deliver and the reality he was presiding over were two completely different states. Now many of his most ardent followers were wondering why they hadn't seen this coming.
“Now try again,” the General insisted gently.
Chump glanced at the talking points on his tablet. He was far too vain to wear glasses in public. This meant he had to hold the device at arm’s length to make out the words on the tiny screen.
This was one of the reasons he ad-libbed and went off topic so often. He couldn’t read a teleprompter without his glasses, and he was adamant he would not wear them in public because he felt it sent the wrong message about his health and virility. He constantly reminded himself, and anyone who would listen, that he was a fit seventy-year-old, much fitter than the average seventy-year-old, despite a diet consisting mostly of steak and fries, large volumes of whiskey, and ice-cream. He did struggle with his short-term memory from time to time, but this was an issue he mostly ignored.
“Maybe we should try the cards again,” the General suggested gently while he waited for Chump to begin.
“No, I’ll be fine.” Chump drew back his shoulders, took a deep breath and squinted at the tablet.
“I would like to welcome you all here today for this great...”
“Mr President,” the General growled, “I have a limited amount of patience...”
Chump took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and resumed.
“This is a momentous mission. It is a very significant event because it represents the culmination of a process combining the resources of all the main international space agencies, public and private sector...”
“Very good, Mr President,” the General congratulated him once Chump had completed the short speech and ran through it again for good measure, “now let’s
go outside and do it for real, shall we?”
“..to mount this unmanned mission to intercept and explore Automedon, in such a tight time frame, is a great and wonderful thing, a very great, enormous, accomplishment. This mission is the first step of many that we will take to join the MFY colonists in expanding our reach into the solar system and beyond.” Chump paused for breath. “These efforts will be of great scientific and economic benefit to all in terms of jobs, education, and the innovative technologies which will spin off from this global enterprise, and this is a very great and significant thing.” Chump almost choked on the words. He could only begin to imagine the disbelief these utterances would provoke in his support base, the largely white male middle class, blue collar workers, he and his business cronies, so-called success stories of the American Dream, had been busy disenfranchising one way or another for decades, shipping once well-paid jobs overseas to the lowest bidder so they were lost to the American economy forever.
Chump rambled on in the same vein for several minutes, explaining how the next mission would have an internationally selected crew aboard, following the script as best he could, and then the speech tailed off. He had planned a resounding finale about how the mission was a triumph for American know how and can-do attitude. However, as he drew in a deep breath, in preparation for wandering off-topic, he caught sight of a warning look from the General who must have been reading his mind and finished with a very subdued “This will be a very great, great international mission to Ma... er... Automedon. One step on the long journey to Mars.”
As his voice faded, the producers switched their attention to the mission control room where the control team counted down the final launch sequences. On the launch pad, pumps rattled into life, engines fired, and clouds of smoke and steam billowed from the base of the rocket as the superheated exhaust gases boiled the water in the sump beneath the rig the rocket was perched on.
The Colonists Page 10
