Going Interstellar

by Les Johnson

  In that time, the vat-born helot settlers would be decanted and receive their rudimentary educations. The away-craft—almost never used during the long journey—would be checked and run through shake-down flights. And security precautions would be taken to ensure the compliance of the survivors of House Shaddock when they were awakened to help shuttle the rest of the Exodate down to their new home.

  — 9 —

  71st Year of the Sixth Exodate

  Upon rousing from cold sleep, Ackley sul-Shaddock’s eyes opened, but took a long time to clear and start focusing. So, knowing he had no time to waste, Harrod leaned over where the Raised Intendant could see him. “I’m sorry for what happened to your House,” Harrod said. “I didn’t know.”

  Ackley’s eyes swam in the direction of Harrod’s voice, then found his face. “I know,” he rasped. And let his head fall back.

  A moment later, the door opened and two big helots—one grasping either arm—dragged Harrod roughly from the cryocell chamber.

  Harrod was surprised when the eight and ninth lash came in quick sequence—one-two. He managed to turn what might have been a sob into a gargling cough. And he waited.

  Overlord Bikrut Mellis had been most inventive: although there were no whips aboard the Photrek Courser, he had improvised a braided length of wire coating. With the wires themselves stripped out, the plastic and latex sheathes were remarkably flexible. And felt very much like a hide whip to Harrod’s largely undiscriminating back.

  The tenth lash landed with a savagery—and sharp crack—that dwarfed any of the other blows. Harrod bit his tongue—literally—and slumped in the cuffs which hung from the ceiling. Perhaps if the ship had not been under full-thrust deceleration, a whipping might have been impossible: gravity or its analog was pretty much a prerequisite. But on second thought, forced to innovate beyond the bounds of tradition, Bikrut might have arrived at something far more novel—and painful.

  The Overlord’s voice was in his ear. “Why have you been punished, Intendant?”

  Harrod tried to raise his head, but felt darkness close in and the cross-hatched weals on his back burn like a cooking grill.

  “Answer. I command it.”

  “I . . . I showed sympathy to a person of House Shaddock.”

  “Excellent. You understand your transgression. And I know you understood your punishment. I presume you understand that the first caused the second. And that another transgression will result in a more extensive punishment.”

  “Yes, my Overlord.”

  Bikrut turned to the helots. “Remove his restraints.”

  They complied: Harrod almost fell, but swaying, dropped to a knee and managed to steady himself.

  “An appropriate position for you.”

  Harrod looked up. Bikrut was staring down at him: the words had not been uttered in an unkind tone. They had simply been weighty, determined—like a pronouncement. Harrod watched Bikrut’s eyes, not knowing what might happen next.

  To his great surprise, Bikrut shook his head and turned away. “Harrod, for that act of disloyalty, I would have sent any other Intendant out an airlock—you, too, if it were not for our need of your skills, and your otherwise . . . unimpeachable . . . service. But know this: you shall not be Raised up.”

  Hardly a surprise. “My Overlord is just; my transgression warrants no less.”

  Bikrut almost seemed to spit his frustration. “Idiot! It is not your transgression that has cost you your Raising. It is your mildness, your subservience.”

  Harrod looked up, too stunned to remember that he must not look an Overlord directly in the eyes. “My—my subservience is at fault?”

  “Of course it is, dolt! Tell me this: what is the privilege and fate of the Evolved?”

  “To dominate.” Harrod repeated it like the rote catechism it was.

  “Exactly. And so, consider well: do you truly belong in that class? Never a stare of resentment. Never a protracted silence in which you might be nursing your own fancies of vengeance. Not even the slightest subversion of orders to put your own imprint upon an undertaking. No acts of pride, or anger, or passion, or impulse. And so, never whipped but once, when you were very young.”

  “But…but…is this not the behavior the Evolved teach Intendants to follow? Have my actions failed to match your instruction in any way?”

  “No—and that is the problem, Harrod. If we Raise up your gene-line, what does it promise for House Mellis? Brilliance? Yes, without doubt. A calm ability to see and solve problems? Without question. But what of the instinct to dominate, to lead, to impose your will upon others: to win?”

  “I—I do not know what to say, my Overlord.”

  “Of course you don’t. You are a lesser being. And that is why we cannot Raise you, Harrod.” The tone in Bikrut’s voice was a strange mix of annoyance, pity, and apology. Then he tossed his makeshift lash aside. “There is much to do. You are tasked to oversee Ackley’s readying of the away craft.”

  “My Overlord, Ackley now has rank over me.”

  “He does not. His Raising has been nullified. By me. He will do as you instruct. Or he will die.”

  “Yes, my Overlord.”

  “You must also make haste to collect as much data on the planet as possible: maps, meteorological patterns, climate belts. I am particularly concerned with the latter.”

  “Because, as a satellite, it has no axial tilt and therefore no seasons?”

  “So you understand, then?”

  “I believe so, my Overlord. Without seasonal variation, weather patterns will continue to amplify themselves. The weather could be comparatively constant, but quite severe.”

  “Exactly. And therefore, locating optimal habitation zones could be as difficult as it is imperative.”

  “I will not fail you in this, my Overlord.”

  “No. Of course you won’t.” And he left at a brisk pace.

  Harrod became more aware of the pain again, slumped down to both knees.

  He felt a hand on his arm, looked up.

  The larger of the two helots—a sandy blonde ox with a square, open face—stared down at him. “Why?”

  “ ‘Why?’ Why what?”

  The helot glanced at the lash. “Why did he beat you so? How did you fail him?”

  Harrod surprised himself with a bark of laughter. “I failed him by doing everything he has asked. Since I was born.”

  The helot stared down at him, and then, shaking his head, helped Harrod to his feet.

  — 11 —

  “So are we ready to land?” Bikrut’s tone was impatient.

  On an external monitor, Senrefer Tertius Seven stared back at the Overlord and his senior advisors. The angry eyes of multiple hurricanes chased each other—in slow motion, from this altitude—out of the turbulent equatorial ocean belt as they watched.

  “I estimate ten days at the earliest, my Overlord. Since the security-protected shuttles have turned out to be far more reliable than the unprotected ones, we are progressing at a pace constrained by the remaining number of Shaddock pilots.”

  Bikrut glared but said nothing: he had not wanted to wake any members of that crippled House unless absolutely necessary. Indeed, Bikrut had expressed how convenient it was that the “traitorous devos” were already entombed in cryogenic sarcophagi. But rousing the pilots of House Shaddock had been unavoidable: their shuttles proved vastly superior to, and safer than, the others. Ultimately, without their services, the chances for successful settlement would have been uncertain, at best.

  Harrod decided it was best to change the topic swiftly. He thumbed his control unit: charts, graphs, and progress tables sprang up on the smaller monitors behind him. “As you can see, much of the local flora and fauna is ultimately edible, but—as our first samplers’ deaths revealed—very little of it can be consumed without prior processing. Mostly, this means leaching it with common organic acids to break down a variety of mild toxins. Also, in addition to standard collagen, there are a variety of related su
bstances which cause most of the vegetable matter to pass through our tracts too quickly. Leaching dissolves these more troublesome fibrous substances; boiling allows them to be stripped out.”

  “And how are the first test settlers doing, otherwise?”

  “Quite well, actually, although they had some initial difficulty adapting to the gravity. This suggests that before anyone goes planetside, they should spend three, rather than two, weeks in the rotating habitation pods, which we now have operating full time at one-gee equivalent centrifugal force.”

  “And have you identified our landing site?”

  Harrod hesitated. “Yes, my Overlord, I have. Or rather, ‘we’ have. But I find myself to be the sole dissenting voice in the study group.”

  “Explain.”

  Harrod called up a rotating image of the moon on one of the monitors. “As you will note, slightly less than five percent of the satellite’s surface is land, and most of that is clustered in what we have arbitrarily designated as the northern hemisphere. Its many islands are all surface-breaking crests of steep sea-mounts. Their terrain is comprised of forbidding mountains, most rising up along what one might call the ‘spine’ of each separate island. At sea-level, however, most have a tidal shelf and skirt of land that ascends into a fringe of upland forest. There seems to be a reasonable diversity of biota throughout these archipelagos, and initial surveys suggest that while there is little iron, copper and tin deposits are not uncommon.”

  “And the other site?”

  Harrod slowed and then stopped the globe’s rotation as it centered on a discernible dot in the middle of the huge and unremarked ocean expanses of the southern hemisphere. “This landmass is, you might say, the top of a seamount ‘mesa’ of immense proportions. It is approximately 900 by 600 kilometers in size. Much of its land is flat, and it seems to boast the deepest soils on the satellite. It is a natural site for large-scale agriculture, and its eastern half has a fairly extensive network of rivers, comprised of three separate watersheds, two of which could—one day—be connected by canals, even using primitive construction methods.”

  “And so that is the site you recommend, Intendant?”

  “No, my Overlord. That is the site uniformly recommended by the rest of the research group.”

  “And you choose the scattered islands and archipelagos of the north? Why?”

  “My Overlord, the southern continent lies astride a weather belt which, while generally favorable, experiences some considerable meteorological extremes. Also, it has almost no other landmasses nearby. Except for a handful of small, scattered seamount atolls, it is alone in the southern hemisphere.

  “In contrast, the islands of the north lay scattered across the many weather bands of that more moderate hemisphere. If we discover that our first site there is not optimal, relocation is quite feasible, using local means. Also, since there are many separate islands, it will be possible to establish widely-separated communities and so ensure that they could not all fall victim to any one disastrous event, such as a tidal wave or sequence of hurricanes. In establishing multiple, smaller communities, we ensure the survival of our race.”

  And as he said it, he knew the Evolved executive collective before him had already dismissed his concerns. They would no doubt tell themselves that Intendant Harrod was unduly obsessed with mishaps, was prone to worrying about risks that were phantoms of his imagination, rather than actual dangers.

  But the real reason they dismissed his analysis was because Evolveds were not merely given to contention, but sought it out. It was how they exhibited and lived their mandate to dominate. Set down in small, separated settlements, they would have no arena in which to highlight their personal prowess, no neighbors against which to pit their wills. In short, they would insist upon settling together: an eternally bickering pack of would-be tyrants.

  Bikrut raised his chin. “A most adequate presentation, Intendant. We will not detain you from your preparation of the next wave of helot settlers. The landing craft are nearing readiness?”

  “They are all fully operational, my Overlord. Several are already shuttling down advance supplies for the settlement. Intendant Ackley is organizing that labor most effectively.”

  “And so he assures his continued survival. I want you and him to coordinate the dismantling of the command hull’s escape pods beginning next week: their fuel and subsystems will be urgently needed planetside. You may leave.”

  And so Harrod did, first exiting the sleek bridge module, then the much bulkier command hull to which it was attached, and heading aft fifty meters along the keel-way of the Ark. Here he slipped through a hatchway coupling cube and emerged into a zero-gee habitation module, reserved for the recently decanted helots. They stood as he entered.

  “Intendant,” said their leader with a deep bow. When he straightened, Harrod saw that it was the same one who had helped him up after his scourging. The helot smiled; Harrod returned it reflexively—and thought: Bikrut is right. I lack the domineering hauteur of the Evolved; I can’t be one of them.

  He motioned for the helots to gather around; this day would be their first spent under a full gee in the spinning habitation modules. They would be cramped there, but it was essential to ready as many of them as possible for—

  A sound that Harrod had only heard once before—during the Ark’s first systems test, seventy-five years ago—stunned him now: the emergency klaxon. Without a word to the helots, he turned to rush out of the big, boxy hab module—but the door to the coupler autosealed with a breathy hiss.

  Stunned, Harrod stared at the closed hatchway for a moment, then paged the bridge—only to find that there was already a line paging him. Not recognizing the code, he answered, curious and cautious: “Hello?”

  “Hello, Harrod.” The voice was Ackley’s. “Where are you?”

  “In the zerogee hab modules. With the helots.”

  “Excellent. Stay there. You’ll be safe.”

  “What do you mean, ‘I’ll be safe?’ Safe from what?”

  “It will be over very soon.”

  “What will?”

  Ackley paused as if startled at Harrod’s naiveté. “The destruction of House Mellis, of course.”

  There was a muffled blast, a heavy impact that sent Harrod and the helots reeling aft, and the faint squeal of deforming metal near the module coupler hatch. “What—what in the name of the Death Fathers are you doing, Ackley?”

  “Killing those who killed us—before they can finish the job. The jolt you felt was one of the cryogenic hive-modules being blown free of the Courser.”

  “But—-how?”

  “Simple, really. We doubled each coupler cube’s separator charges when Bikrut had us run a systems check. Put in radio-operated triggers. We guessed that would be enough to tear each module free of the main hull. Seems we were right.”

  “How many—how many are you ‘jettisoning’?”

  “Intendant: what a question. Why, all of them, of course. They killed almost four hundred of us. Now we’re killing twenty-eight hundred of them. Since one of us is worth ten of them, they’ve still got the better part of the deal. But not for long.” His voice lowered. “Harrod, give me the access codes for the bridge module.” In the background, Harrod now heard faint gunshots, two screams, the hissing rattle of a machine pistol.

  “I don’t know the access codes,” Harrod lied.

  “Of course you do.” Ackley didn’t even sound moderately annoyed.

  And Harrod thought: am I so predictable, then? Well yes, I suppose I am. “No, I really don’t know the codes.”

  “Harrod, we have already tortured one of these curs—and he insisted that you do know the codes. Insisted quite emphatically.”

  “He must be mistaken, then.”

  “Really? I wasn’t under the impression that Overlord Bikrut’s second son would be so terribly misinformed.” Ackley’s tone became more intimate. “Listen, Harrod: you don’t understand. You are being offered a signal honor: coopera
te now, and the new Overlord Shaddock will Raise you up. A full integration of your seed in the House’s First Line. You are the only creature bearing the name Mellis who will survive this day—if you cooperate.”

  Harrod felt the whip upon his back, tasted the broken promises of his Raising, but also saw the slaughter that would ensue if the vengeful survivors of House Shaddock entered the bridge module, which was probably where the women and children of House Mellis had taken shelter. “I—I cannot give you the codes. I cannot be the instrument of so much senseless killing.”

  “Killing, yes; senseless, no.” Ackley’s tone was chillingly casual. “It makes quite a lot of sense to kill people who have already proven that they would cheerfully kill all of us in our cryocells—if they didn’t need some of our pilots to fly their away-craft. Speaking of which, this is your last chance—because if we don’t get the codes, we’re leaving.”

  Harrod felt that, although he was motionless, the world around him was spinning furiously. “Leaving?”

  “Of course. If we can’t seize the Courser, then we will take the away-craft. And I’m sorry, but we’ll have to harm your pretty ship a bit as we leave. Harrod, this is your last chance.” A moment of silent waiting; then another sputter of gunfire. “Very well, Harrod. Your death—and only yours—is a waste. Your skills will be missed.”

  And the circuit went dead. At the same moment, explosions rocked the ship, first pushing strongly from aft—the engines, no doubt—and then light but irregular buffeting from the other three points of the compass.

  “What was that?” asked the leader of the helots.

  Harrod moved to inspect the coupler. “The first jolt was the engines being sabotaged. The next was our electromagnetic shielding pods being blasted free. Without them, the radiation levels in this hull will climb rapidly. And without our engines . . .” House Shaddock had crippled the Ark itself. At first it seemed madness, but then Harrod perceived—and conceded—the canny inspiration behind that madness. Since House Shaddock could not hold the ship—and therefore, the high ground—it was necessary that the enemy’s seat of power be rendered useless. And that is what they had done to Photrek Courser: damaged engines and an absence of radiation shielding made this once mighty Ark a death ship. Whether it spiraled in toward the seas of Senrefer Tertius Seven, or was sucked in years later by the gas giant itself was hardly worthy of debate: in the end, the great Ark, the enabler of any further Rites of Exile, was gone. In its place was only the unremitting contention and enmity of the rival Houses.