by Alex Lamb
‘Something came up,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving.’
Mimi looked disappointed. ‘What about them?’
Three standard-issue guardbots clad in wasp-striped tact-fur clumped around the corner, their camera-lights winking.
Mimi’s face fell. ‘You’re kidding.’
Krotokin’s shoulders sagged in relief.
Ann regarded the president coldly. ‘Don’t think you’re off the hook,’ she said.
She gestured for her heavies to follow, then turned and walked away. It chafed to be leaving the scene of an arrest like this, but what else could she do? Events had overtaken them, which meant that petty Frontier conflicts like this one would soon be fodder for the history books. There was some relief to be had in that, along with a healthy serving of fear.
‘Ara,’ she told her pilot, ‘please prepare for immediate departure. Destination is New Panama HQ. We’ll be coming up via shuttle within the hour.’
1.3: WILL
Will Kuno-Monet stood alone at the window filling one wall of the IPSO senatorial lounge and struggled for calm. Beyond the glass, the city of Bradbury stretched under a dusty lavender sky. Ranks of fin-shaped supertowers marched to the low horizon, each proudly displaying some architectural quirk intended to make it look somehow more important than the others. At least half of them were still unfinished – webbed over with support fibre and crawling with construction spiders.
Dense traffic flowed between the buildings through a sprawl of glassy tunnels that made the vehicles look like blood cells racing through a network of capillaries. To Will’s mind, the whole city resembled a farm of giant, interconnected lungs – which wasn’t far from the truth. Bradbury produced so much atmospheric leakage these days that you could see real clouds over the city.
A lot had changed since his first visit after the war. Back then, Bradbury was a scatter of neo-deco palaces left over from the Martian Renaissance, pockmarked with bullet holes and mingled with ugly Truist block-architecture. All the original buildings were gone now – vanished under the tide of change along with his optimism.
Will breathed deep and tried to sweep the worry and the anger to the corners of his mind. Ira was counting on him. This next senate session needed to go right or their funding woes would only increase. He just wished the nightmares hadn’t picked this particular week to return.
Will had suffered from war-dreams for most of his life and had developed strategies to handle them. This time, though, they were worse than ever. Instead of seeing Amy screaming in the Truists’ torture chair, which had actually happened, he saw Rachel. Her last word before they fried her brain was always Mark. He felt sick just thinking about it.
When he’d told Nelson about it, his friend had calmly suggested that Will had unresolved guilt issues relating to the loss of his wife’s ship and his almost-son’s subsequent attempt to rescue her. No shit. He didn’t need a trained psychologist to tell him that. He’d not been able to sleep properly ever since the tribunal that had crippled Mark’s career. What Will craved was some way to get the screaming in the back of his head to stop. He rubbed his tired eyes.
Behind him, the door to the session chamber slid open. Will turned to see Parisa Voss, the senator for Antarctica and his staunchest political ally, step out and stride across the slowly evolving gold-patterned carpet to meet him. Like most home-system politicians, Pari always looked both immaculate and overdressed. She’d changed outfit since their last session together and now wore a magenta foil skirt-suit and a gold Martian Renaissance tiara. Her contact lenses had been tinted a shocking turquoise to match her shoes. Will could make out the subtle play of data light across her pupils. She’d looked about thirty years old for the entire thirty years Will had known her.
‘Are you ready?’ she said.
He nodded.
She peered at him. ‘You okay, Will?’
‘Just more dreams, that’s all.’
She winced and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry. Did you talk to Nelson about it?’
‘Yes, but I think he’s a bit preoccupied with the refurb of the Ariel Two at the moment. He’s got his starship-captain hat on this week and doesn’t have much time to play therapist. Don’t worry, I can manage.’
‘Let me know on the private channel if you need a time out,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll cover for you. The committee’s in fine form today. They’re even more annoying than usual.’
Will tried for a smile. ‘Great.’
‘Speaking of which, we have to change your ten o’clock. Representative Bose has ducked out on us. I think Ochoa is pressuring him.’
Will groaned. In the virtual space of his home node, he brought up the bewildering multicoloured mess of his calendar. A wide lane of appointment slots peppered with thousands of memory keys led off into the distance.
‘I’m thinking we slide that session with the Transcendist bishops in there,’ said Pari. ‘They’ll take what they can get.’
‘Done.’
As Will’s time-management SAP dutifully moved the slots about, he couldn’t help glancing off into the far, unbooked future. Somehow, that wonderful empty land always receded as he moved towards it. Apparently, you couldn’t be the first person in human history to make contact with an alien civilisation, end an interstellar war and claim control over a planet-busting starship the size of a small country without people noticing. And since they’d noticed, his involvement in government had proved unavoidable.
The promises Will had made to Gustav Ulanu after the fall of Truism didn’t help, either. When Gustav ascended to the ecclesiastical throne as Prophet, he’d begged Will to ensure that Earth remained a fair partner in IPSO affairs. Since Gustav’s assassination at the hands of his own people, Will had felt more duty-bound than ever to maintain that balance. Consequently, he had little time these days to function as a starship captain or even a roboteer. He was, as Gustav had once put it, ‘an icon of incontestable power’. His duty was to the entire human race. And apparently that meant meetings – lots and lots of meetings.
‘Okay,’ he told Pari. ‘Let’s do this.’
She led him back towards the chamber where IPSO’s Defence Funding Committee was in session. As he walked, Will prepared.
Over the years, he’d developed a Self-Aware Program for political discourse – a persona to hide behind. It worked well but came with costs. The SAP guided his body but didn’t filter emotions, and Will had found that his anger in meetings tended to accumulate. Nevertheless, he reached for the icon labelled Statesman and pressed it against his mind like a mask, turning himself into a Teflon-coated lobbyist yet again.
At the same time he stretched his mind wide, syncing it with the building’s pervasivenet. Fingers of his awareness slid out to cover the senate’s secure communications traffic. The political backchannels, supposedly invisible to all but the chosen few, fell open to him. Will knew he wasn’t supposed to use his powers to spy on his adversaries, but he’d realised years ago that they were already spying on him. All he was doing was balancing the game. When he’d told Pari, she’d expressed astonishment that it had taken him so long to pick up the habit.
Will plastered a diplomatic smile on his face, took a deep breath and stepped into the high-ceilinged session chamber. A mahogany podium faced a ring of tall chairs clad in real vat-leather where the funding committee’s members sat waiting – a rainbow-dressed bunch with expensive physiques and flawless hair. The Earther habit of dressing in patriotic sect colours, or House colors, as they now liked to call them, had been making a comeback. Behind them, anti-snooping baffles in Fleet-blue twisted on the walls.
‘Everyone, I think most of you have met Captain Ambassador Kuno-Monet,’ said Pari Voss. ‘And those who haven’t will of course recognise him and understand what a privilege this is for all of us.’
Will waved the flattery away with a self-deprecating hand.
‘Captain Monet has come to speak to us on behalf of Fleet Admiral Baron. I’d like to thank him on behalf of the senate for finding room in his schedule to make that possible.’
Lukewarm applause rippled around the room. In reality most of the senate thought of him as a political halfwit and an annoying obstruction to their plans, just as he regarded them as oily, money-grabbing crooks. But they were all too seasoned to let their opinions show, so the game ticked along as ever. Will surveyed the unwelcoming faces around him and smiled.
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for your time. I’d like to say a few words today about the organisation we represent. IPSO was established with a single goal – to protect a balance of power that would permit Earth and the colonies to prosper together in peace. For thirty years, we have succeeded in that ambition.’
[Hah!]
That response came on the private channel for Earth’s Free Movement faction – the political face of the Flag-Drop industry. Will ignored it. He’d learned long ago that hearing your opponent’s sarcasm was far more useful than pretending it wasn’t there – presuming you could hold your anger in check, of course. He spoke on.
‘Since our founding, humanity has pushed out beyond the gateway-lobe at New Panama and now inhabits over a dozen star systems that formerly belonged to the Fecund species, as well as our own.’
[As opposed to fifty systems.]
‘On each of our new worlds, settlers from Earth and the Old Colonies live side by side, creating new economies together. That is an extraordinary achievement.’ He paused for effect.
{Extraordinarily short-sighted.}
This latest witticism came from the other side of the house – Isambard Visser, senator for Drexler and champion of furious Colonials everywhere. The anti-Flag bullies in the FPP loved him. Will hesitated for a moment, regaining his poise.
‘We have expanded cautiously,’ he went on, ‘because early experiences proved that unchecked growth results in destabilising conflicts. We have seen time and time again that people will squabble over the scientific advances waiting to be discovered in the new territory, often at the cost of their own lives. And our caution has borne fruit. IPSO has developed a formula for growth, and while it does not please everyone all the time, it has worked.’
{Monet apparently can’t please any of the people, any of the time.}
Will heard stifled chuckles erupting around him. Anger pulsed in his veins. He suppressed it.
‘At the end of the war, people told us that a shared police force couldn’t function without a shared government to back it up. The continued existence of IPSO has proved them wrong. People told us that Earth and the Colonies couldn’t trade. They were wrong, too. The success of the IPSO peace-coin has disproved that. And we were told that genetics and robotics would destabilise the economy, producing a crisis that would plunge us back into war. Had they been right, I would not be standing here before you today.’
[We wish you weren’t.]
‘However, we now stand at a crossroads. Under consideration for a vote at the next senate plenum is Bill Eight-Eight-Two. If this bill passes, the funding support for starship construction will be reduced by a third. This proposal comes at a time when conflicts on the Far Frontier are occurring at an ever-increasing rate. This bill is only before us because certain members of IPSO’s governing body have begun to lose faith in the balance we espouse. There are some who believe that the Colonial governments should be allowed to police their worlds without IPSO oversight. This would please representatives of the Old Colonies but probably mean the deaths of tens of thousands of Earth’s unregistered settlers across the Far Frontier.’
{Monet makes it clear he stands against the rule of law.}
‘There are others who believe that the planetary registration process should be disbanded, permitting human expansion to accelerate. This would allow individual Houses of Earth’s estate to effectively claim worlds for themselves in isolation, creating a scientific gold rush likely to end in a bloodbath.’
[Or human diversity, perhaps – a nightmare prospect.]
‘Both of these visions require IPSO to adopt a passive role in human affairs. I can see why slashing the Fleet budget might look appealing at first glance – extracting fees from governments who do not welcome our support is never easy. However, giving in to either of these agendas bolsters one party at the expense of the other. In reality, the alternative to balance is chaos. Thus, in my capacity as special adviser to the senate and representative of Fleet Admiral Baron, I move for Bill Eight-Eight-Two to be struck from the agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, if we don’t act as guardians of the human peace, no one will. We all stand to lose if the bill is passed. For the sake of humanity, please stand with me. Thank you for listening. May I count on your support?’
Silence followed. The senators shifted in their seats. Finally, a large, cadaverous man in a floor-length tangerine coat raised a hand – Gaius Ochoa, the senator for Titan and the leader of Earth’s Free Movement faction.
‘Captain Monet, thank you for speaking,’ he said. ‘You have lost none of your oratorical flair.’
Chuckles filled the backchannel. Will smiled sweetly.
‘Please be assured that we understand your concerns. We share them, in fact. However, we just can’t be seen to prioritise ship-building at this time. It’s as simple as that. Money is tight all around, Captain. IPSO has half a dozen major projects badly in need of support.’ He held up a bony hand and marked them off. ‘You’ve got the Earth Exodus shuttle project; the housing programmes throughout the home system; the lottery programme for colony relocations … The lottery programme alone has been begging for extra money for nestship berths for the last five years.’
Will nodded with sage understanding. ‘Absolutely. I’m aware of the difficulties.’
‘Are you?’ said a pale-skinned woman in a green – Constance Fon, the senator for Africa. ‘Did you read the most recent Emergency Earth status report?’
Will shook his head politely and pretended he couldn’t guess what he was about to hear.
‘It will, they say, take about forty more years to get Earth’s fifteen billion offworld,’ she said. ‘That’s assuming no population increase, which looks unlikely given the current boom in life-extension technologies. At the same time, weather stability has deteriorated by another fourteen per cent. Earth’s climate is projected to slide into the Galatea Zone within the decade.’
Will understood that term from personal experience. The Galatea Zone was the period between habitability and sterility in which a planetary ecosystem exhibited violent, chaotic behaviour. The Galatean colonists had encountered it during their misguided attempts at terraforming. Earth, they’d since discovered, was now approaching the same state from the other direction as its ailing biosphere finally gave out.
‘Under conditions like these,’ said Fon, ‘the approaching disaster on Earth must inevitably be a priority.’
Pari raised a manicured finger. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘But Earth’s weather has been a known issue for years. It’s not necessarily an IPSO problem, though. It’s a local one.’
‘I beg to differ,’ said Fon. ‘IPSO must weigh the social benefits and step in where it can effect the greatest good. Disaster relief is written clearly into our charter. And how many people are involved in your Frontier conflicts, Captain Monet? Thousands? Perhaps tens of thousands? The Far Frontier colonies are all but empty. By comparison, the problems on Earth involve the lives of billions. Earth may be a local crisis, but it dwarfs the skirmishes you’re worried about, and for that we need ferries, not battleships.’
‘A fair point, madam,’ said Will. ‘However, if the brakes come off at the Frontier, there’s no telling where it will end. Do I need to remind you that it only takes a single starship to threaten a world, regardless of how many people are on it?’
‘Captain Monet,’ said Gaius Ochoa with a sly smile, ‘the only person in history who’s jeopardised a planet with a starship is you. You’re not threatening us, I hope?’
The backchannel erupted with laughter again. This time Will struggled not to respond. Putting the Ariel Two in orbit around Earth to end the war had been one of the hardest and most frightening things he’d ever done. He’d hated every fraught, desperate minute of the ordeal. It was amazing how nobody ever thanked him for it.
‘No,’ Will snapped. ‘But I would point out that there is nothing to stop us from simply moving Earth’s population down into subcities or up into orbitals. Not every single citizen needs to be laboriously relocated to another gravity well at IPSO’s expense.’
The Statesman SAP sent him a worried squeak. He got a warning look from Pari, too. He’d been too blunt. He saw some of the senators’ expressions tighten. Two of them folded their arms.
‘Unfortunately, subcities don’t work,’ said Fon. ‘The tectonic consequences of the Galatea Effect make that painfully obvious. And orbitals are no better. We learned from the debacle at Drexler nine years ago that we can’t force people to live a certain way. They won’t accept it. Accidents happen. People die.’
Will gave up pandering and swiped the SAP aside. ‘The Drexler disaster was sabotage,’ he said. ‘It happened because we weren’t there to stop it. Just like we won’t be if you let this damned bill pass.’
Will knew he’d lost his cool. He should have let the SAP do the work, but spending his days as a puppet to his own software did not sit well with him. They’d always known it was a long shot asking the committee to drop the bill. Both sides wanted the Fleet starved so they could access the money hiding in the Far Frontier.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Why should the Fleet’s policing efforts be spread so thin in the face of the bigger problem? I mean, if the Fleet really wanted to make a difference, then by your logic most of them ought to be right here, focusing their efforts on the contractors who run all those Exodus projects and rooting out all the white-collar crime. After all, there have been some mighty unusual prices charged for some of those relocation programmes.’
