Gardens of the Sun

by Paul McAuley

One day, when she was feeling especially bruised after Sada Selene had intercepted her in the refectory and asked her to eat elsewhere because the Ghosts and the PacCom diplomats had become embroiled in a confidential bit of business, Tommy Tabagee found her sitting alone in a niche at the waist of one of the big spherical spaces. Open tiers stepped away below. Work spaces, dormitories, communal areas, all white and bright and clean, displayed like a section through an architectural model. Voices and the small change of human activity rising in the cold air. Tommy Tabagee sat beside Macy, dangling his feet out over the void, and said that if it had been up to him she would have been quite welcome to sit in on the talks.

  ‘We’re all in this together and we all more or less want the same thing, after all.’

  ‘Really? What’s that?’

  ‘Why, some kind of reconciliation, of course. Some way of patching up the differences between Earth and the Outer System.’

  ‘So it isn’t just about getting hold of the secrets behind the fast-fusion motor. That is what they’re talking about back there, isn’t it?’

  Macy had been building up towards asking him about that for some time. Her anger encouraged her to forget all caution and just go ahead and do it.

  Tommy Tabagee’s smile didn’t waver. ‘I figured you would have heard about that by now. And I don’t blame you for being angry. I know you have a proprietorial interest, because you and your partner stole the specifications from the Brazilians in the first place. I heard how you saved Avernus, too, and helped to make a fool of Professor Doctor Sri Hong-Owen. Did I ever tell you that I met her? An interesting woman. Frighteningly clever, but barely human, if you ask me. A curiously vulnerable mixture of arrogance and naivety.’

  ‘Are you changing the subject, Mr Tabagee?’

  ‘I do tend to ramble, don’t I? All right, I’ll try to be as straight as possible: of course we want the bloody fusion motor. Without it, we’re very badly disadvantaged out here. I should know, having spent so long in hibernation on the voyage from Saturn to Neptune. If we had the same capability as our allies, it would give us more influence. We might just be able to push history in the right direction. Towards peace and reconciliation. Otherwise there may well be some sorrowful days ahead.’ Tommy Tabagee said this with some passion. He was very serious, for once. ‘And besides all that, information wants to be free. As I’ve told our hosts, my job is to hasten the inevitable. If they won’t give us what we need, we’ll get it another way.’

  Macy looked at him. ‘Are you making me an offer? If you are, you must know that the Ghosts are listening to us. They listen to everything.’

  ‘I hope I’m giving you something to think about. Them too, if they’re eavesdropping,’ Tommy Tabagee said, raising his voice. ‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

  ‘And I don’t have anything to give you, Mr Tabagee.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Macy. I may have known you for only a brief time, but I’m sure you can handle the responsibility of making a hard and difficult decision like this.’

  ‘It isn’t mine to take.’

  ‘I don’t see why we should involve anyone else in this. After all, you stole the specs in the first place. I reckon that gives you the right to make an independent deal.’

  ‘My partner and I stole the specs. And we gave them away to our friends. So before we could even consider giving or trading them to you, we’d have to discuss it with our friends. And I hope very much that they wouldn’t agree to it.’

  ‘Because you’re afraid of what the Ghosts might do?’

  ‘They outnumber and outgun us, so that’s definitely a consideration. Also, we can’t trust you.’

  ‘Of course you can’t. But you can think about this little conversation. And talk about it with your friends.’

  ‘They’ll say no, Mr Tabagee. No amount of talk will change that.’

  ‘Then what harm will talking about it do?’

  Two days later, the negotiations broke up with nothing settled. The Pacific Community diplomats returned to their ship, and it quit its orbit around Triton to begin its long, slow journey back to Saturn; Macy and Idriss returned to Proteus. Macy carried a data needle that Tommy Tabagee had passed to her when they’d said goodbye. ‘It contains a military-grade encryption key,’ he’d said. ‘You can use it to talk to me without worrying about the Ghosts listening in. I know you’ll have to talk to your friends about it first. That’s fine. Take your time. I have a long voyage ahead of me, and I’ll be spending most of it asleep. When I wake up, I hope to hear what you have to say.’

  Macy told the other Free Outers about Tommy Tabagee’s overtures during the long meeting in which she and Idriss Barr gave accounts of their talks with the Ghosts and the PacCom representatives. Idriss was cautiously optimistic. The PacCom diplomats had left empty-handed because they had failed to reach any kind of agreement with the Ghosts, and the Free Outers now had the chance of opening a separate line of communication with the Pacific Community. It would not commit them to anything - certainly not to trading the specifications of the fast-fusion motor for vague promises about a future alliance. But simply showing that they were willing to talk might give them some influence; perhaps even some protection.

  A minority, led by Mary Jeanrenaud, disagreed loudly and vehemently. They wanted nothing further to do with the Pacific Community because it was too dangerous: if the Ghosts discovered that the Free Outers were talking with the Pacific Community, they might decide to put an end to the Free Outers’ independence. Macy was happy to sit back and let Idriss deal with these points, and with many other suggestions and objections. He loved debates like this, was lively and eloquent, and radiated charm and good humour; a good deal of his persuasive power stemmed from the fact that it was very hard to dislike him. In the end, the Free Outers could only agree that they disagreed. They would not reach out to the Pacific Community, but they would not reject out of hand the possibility of beginning a conversation if the Pacific Community reached out to them.

  Idriss and Macy had been gone for twenty days, and she’d been out of contact with Newt and the twins for all that time because the Ghosts had refused to allow what they called unnecessary use of their communications system. After the meeting broke up, she and Newt took a long rambling walk along the terraces of their habitat, led by Han and Hannah. She saw with pride and nostalgia that while she’d been away the children had changed in a hundred tiny and marvellous ways. They were eager to show Macy the new rows of tree seedlings they had planted, extending the line of the new forest along the edge of a vibrant meadow. Han had appropriated a watering can and pretended to douse the feet of his favourite trees and talked to them in soothing tones as if they were pets. Hannah held Macy’s fingers in her hot little fist, naming the trees by species, explaining how much they had grown and how tall they would soon be.

  The children had already forgotten that she had been away, and didn’t question what she had been doing. She was happy to wander with them wherever they chose, luxuriating in their artless talk, chasing after them and allowing herself to be chased. The spare copses of spindly trees and the soft green swathes of clover and catch grass might be poor imitations of forests and meadows on Earth, but it seemed to Macy that she had come home for the first time.

  Later, after they had fed the twins and put them to bed and Newt had told them another episode of one of his pirate stories, after he and Macy had made love, quick and hungry, another homecoming, they lay in each other’s arms and she told him about the offer that Sada had made just before Macy and Idriss had left. To tweak Macy’s eggs so that they would be compatible with Outer sperm. So that she and Newt could have children of their own.

  She watched him while he thought about this. Their faces centimetres apart, his gaze sharpening as he said, ‘Did you say no straight away? Or did you say you’d think about it?’

  ‘I said that I’d have to talk to you. And I asked her how she knew about our problem. She refused to tell me, of course.’r />
  ‘It was probably one of the defectors,’ Newt said.

  ‘Or Mary Jeanrenaud. She loves gossip, and she hates me.’

  ‘Gossip is the glue that holds us together,’ Newt said. ‘And she doesn’t exactly hate you.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what else to call it.’

  ‘Sada could have made this offer at any time,’ Newt said. ‘Why make it now?’

  Macy felt as if a cramped muscle had relaxed. Newt understood. He saw the problem, just as she did. She said, ‘She knew that Tommy Tabagee asked me about the fusion motor, but she never even mentioned it.’

  ‘Because she knows you turned him down.’

  ‘Because she knew I would have to talk to the rest of the Free Outers about it, and she knew they would turn it down.’

  ‘As they did.’

  ‘As they did. But she must be wondering what else he might have asked or offered me. I doubt if she expects us to tell her, even if we accept her offer, but she hopes that it will keep us close.’

  ‘Did you want to say yes?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘But we can’t owe her, can we? So we’ll have to work things out by ourselves,’ Newt said.

  The voyage back to Proteus and the long contentious meeting had exhausted Macy, but sleep eluded her. While Newt slept beside her, her thoughts turned in futile circles. She remembered a virtual model of a possible adaptation for life in Triton’s ocean that Sada had shown the PacCom diplomats: a human-sized tadpole with a thick tail formed from its fused legs, small arms clasped across its narrow chest, a neck-less head with a band of electrical sensors instead of eyes, a tiny pouting mouth, a feathery collar of blood-red gills. While it slept, Sada had said, a membranous caul rich in blood vessels and colonies of symbiotic bacteria would extrude from its anus, absorbing nutrients from the water and turning them into sugars and fats. A true posthuman species, the first of many.

  Macy had long ago come to terms with the changes that had been made to the genomes of Newt and the other Outers. But the Ghosts had changed the way their children thought because they believed it would bring about the future that was their rightful destiny, and they were willing to turn their grandchildren into fishpeople or batpeople for the same reason. Yes, they would do anything to fulfil Levi’s prophesies and they would not let anyone stand in their way. For long sleepless hours, Macy wondered how she and Newt and the twins would be changed if the Ghosts ever decided that it was necessary to end the Free Outers’ vestigial independence.

  6

  Cash Baker belonged to a floating pool of pilots who operated out of the depot at Bastrop with no fixed routes or duties. He spent half his time making front-line deliveries, and the rest on milk runs - flying officers between bases as required, ferrying small loads to other R&R depots or to the regional administration headquarters in Austin. It was common knowledge that much of the stuff was luxury goods for high-ranking officers, but Cash could care less. He flew every place he was told to fly. It suited him personally because he loved flying and hated routine, and it suited his uncle’s business because he was able to make unscheduled stopovers and drop off all kinds of clandestine cargo.

  The drought didn’t let up. It hadn’t rained since early spring. Summer stretched out hot and dry and endless. Rivers shrank into their channels. Dust storms extended the desert’s edge east and south, erasing decades of R&R work. Fire ripped through ten thousand hectares of rewilded forest north of Bastrop and hot winds blew smoke and soot across the city. Productivity in city farms was at an all-time low because of power and water shortages. Food rationing was strictly enforced. There were several serious clashes when police tried to stop people leaving Bastrop and other cities around and about to forage in the countryside. Freedom Riders claimed responsibility for numerous acts of sabotage. East of Dallas, a group hijacked trucks carrying military provisions and distributed them to hungry citizens.

  Half the personnel of R&R Corps #669 were seconded to security detail, standing guard at roadblocks or patrolling hot spots. Howard Baker suspended the smuggling operation because there were too many strangers on the base and every load going in or out was being checked.

  ‘We’ll hunker down and wait this out,’ he told Cash. ‘When it’s over our friends will be begging to be resupplied with more of our good stuff.’

  ‘Assuming they don’t bring on their revolution,’ Cash said.

  ‘They’ve been talking about revolution since for ever, but it won’t ever happen. Sure, they’re taking advantage of the unrest right now, but it’ll pass. Things will get back to normal before you know it.’

  Flying into Austin from Columbus River early one evening, carrying iceboxes full of crabs and shrimp for a reception for senior R&R officers and the region’s governor, Cash saw threads of smoke rising from the western quarter of the city - the low tree-clad hills where the rich and powerful had their homes. Fires were burning along the culvert of the Hondo River and a hood of smoke was creeping over half the city, making the sunset even more apocalyptic than usual.

  Traffic control instructed him to divert away from the area and make a dogleg south and then east to reach the R&R base. He landed and taxied up to the hangars, and the sergeant who took delivery of the seafood told him that people had tried to march up the Hondo’s bare channel, a big demonstration led by the archbishop of Austin against use of water in the gardens of the rich.

  Cash, thinking of how the lush green quilt of the rich quarter contrasted with the scorched and dusty browns of the rest of the city, allowed that they might have a point.

  The sergeant was a veteran who wore a patch over the empty socket of his right eye and had three fingers missing from his left hand, the kind of bluff no-nonsense soldier who always knew exactly where to fix the blame. Telling Cash, ‘Used to be the families would have been the first to make sacrifices. I can remember the time, must have been thirty years ago, when we had food shortages worse than this. And the families, they dug up their gardens and parks to grow corn and such. They all ate dole yeast like the rest of us, too. But these days, they seem to feel entitled to do whatever they want. People are on rations, they’re starving, and the young blades are throwing extravagant parties or they’re driving around town looking for prole girls to pick up, throwing bread at passers-by. And they keep their swimming pools filled and their fountains working while ordinary folk have to queue at bowsers for a drink of water. So it isn’t any wonder that something like this has happened. And it isn’t any one-day wonder, either. Most every one of my people has been drafted for riot control.’

  ‘It’s that bad?’

  ‘They even took my clerks. Everyone bar base security. You stick around, flyboy, they’ll take you, too.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Someone has to truck in their seafood.’

  ‘Point,’ the sergeant said, and spat dryly.

  Cash told Howard Baker about it the next day. ‘I borrowed a jitney and drove out of the base, tried to get as close to the action as I could. I wasn’t in uniform and the jitney wasn’t an official R&R vehicle, but more than a few people threw rocks at it anyhow. You know the big square they have, where the old railroad station is? It had been turned into a field hospital. There must have been a couple hundred wounded people there, and more turning up all the time. There were dead outside, too. Elements of the Fourth Battalion had been deployed by then and they were using live rounds.’

  ‘How many dead, do you reckon?’ Howard said.

  ‘I counted twenty-eight bodies. Men and women, and two children. Then a bunch of police turned up to try to clear everyone out of there and I left. I couldn’t get close to the river, but I saw plenty of smashed storefronts. One block was on fire and no one was doing anything to put it out. All the fire trucks were probably on the other side of the river, protecting those mansions.’

  Cash took a pull on his bottle of beer. It was his first, ten in the morning. He knew his uncle disapproved, but he needed it to ease the tremor in his ha
nds and the pressure in his head. They were up on the roof of the accommodation block where members of the Baker clan bunked down. Howard Baker kept his pigeons in wire-mesh cages there, grew tomato plants and herbs in tubs. He was pinching out side shoots from a trough of young tomato plants and using a spray bottle to wash dust from their leaves, working calmly and slowly as always. The city of Bastrop stretched out beyond the camp perimeter and the elevated section of the ring road, hundreds of identical ten-storey blocks laid out across the valley in a grid that simmered under a haze of smog. Tree-clad hills rose to the north, fresh and green against the hard blue sky.

  Howard said, ‘From what I heard, it had been brewing for some time in the blocks, and Austin’s archbishop is a young firebrand wants to make a name for hisself. Well, the OSS has him under house arrest right now. They say it’s for his own protection, but you can bet we won’t be hearing from him again.’

  ‘At least he took a shot at the status quo,’ Cash said.

  ‘What happened in Austin, the status quo got pushed and it pushed right back,’ Howard Baker said, squirting water methodically over leaves, working from top to bottom. ‘You saw those wounded people, and the dead. You want to see that happen here? I know I don’t. The way you change people’s minds, it isn’t by burning down their houses. Let me know if I’m wasting my breath, by the way.’

  ‘I’m not about to do anything stupid,’ Cash said.

  ‘I hope not, because there’s a strong strain of stupidity runs through our family. You may not appreciate me telling you this, but you are a valuable asset to our business. It may not be as glamorous as flying spaceships around the rings of Saturn, but it’s a hell of a lot more useful as far as we are concerned. Stick with it. We Bakers have fought enough wars for other people’s causes. It’s past time we looked after ourselves.’

  Cash Baker’s family were Scottish-Irish stock who’d moved from Virginia to Texas while Texas was still a Republic. A goodly number had fallen in the Confederate War, and many more in the wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. They’d clung on through the bad years of climate change and the Overturn, when rising ocean levels had overcome every attempt at defending the coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico against inundation and had driven millions of refugees inland, and Bastrop had swollen from a sleepy county seat to a city crammed with block housing and high-rise farms. They were proud and stubborn, governed by kinship and ancient unwritten codes of honour rather than common law, prone to addiction to every kind of drug, and to violent deaths. Most lived and died unremarked, but every other generation threw up someone who distinguished themselves in the outside world, including a boxing champion, a football star, a country-music singer who’d blown a fortune on a blizzard of crack cocaine and crystal meth, and a couple of handfuls of war heroes.