A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1

by Stewart Hotston

  Of course, they may have other plans than chasing you down, said her AI.

  Her Secondary AI flagged up her body’s need to sleep. She ignored it, set it to remain passive on the issue.

  Having dismissed its parental concerns, she was surprised to see her Primary AI waiting in line to consult on her current strategy. It thought her best option was to leave the highway at Kroonstad, then make their way across country through the interior, before turning south again to follow the river Vaal.

  It suggested a good crossing point would be the American Corporation’s headquarters at Kimberly, a small town that acted as the administrative centre for the northern American states’ raw materials holdings in the region. There were good transport links between there and the regional centre of Keetmanshoop, almost a thousand kilometres west. Helena worried that this would take them perilously close to the routes being used by Indexiv.

  Hiding in plain sight represents the most probable strategy for remaining undiscovered, her AI countered.

  The Americans would be jittery over Indexiv’s incursion. She doubted they would pose an obstacle to her progress.

  The landscape was a collage of quiet shifting shadows as the afternoon waned into sullen evening. She watched the moon rise, upside down as far as she was concerned. It was somewhere between a half and full, she did not know the name for it.

  Michael would know. She yearned to talk to him, to ask his advice.

  Somehow he always made her feel like he cared, that it mattered to him how her life played out. At one hundred and eighty-three, nearly forty years separated them, but they had similar enough temperaments to have been close since her early twenties. Just like her he had remained childless. He had a long-term partner, Hugh, but Oligarchs had forbidden themselves from sharing their longevity except through inheritance.

  The proliferation of immortality was a more terrifying prospect for the Families than a nuclear holocaust. The rules governing longevity had been put together by the eldest members of the first generation who had understood early what their long lives might mean.

  Helena was periodically horrified on Michael’s behalf. There were no technological barriers to providing him children with his partner Hugh. However, he had long since made his peace.

  “I’m my own legacy,” he would remind Helena.

  The conglomerate of sciences that combined to permit long life was just one of a number of technologies whose developments and dissemination the Oligarchs tightly controlled. Most people simply referred to these restricted possibilities as High Technology.

  Denholme’s possession of multiple skill sets showed how prized he was to Euros, but regardless of his value, there were no routes to Oligarchy except by birth. This unbreakable boundary did not stop Normals maintaining their own hierarchy of power in which Denholme was a little more than halfway up. Depending on how far he advanced in the armed services he would be offered the chance of serving an Oligarch directly on retirement.

  It did not take them long to arrive at Kroonstad, a town Helena concluded was entirely unremarkable with only a few people milling about on the single main street. Many had the dull eyed look of those whose frontal lobes were inhabited by someone else. The appearance of a fully armed battle tank did not draw much attention.

  Not everyone in town was so poor that they had to sell their brains as raw processing power to those who governed them. Those whose skin tones were Asian or European tended to have their faculties about them and they watched the RDK pass through Kroonstad’s main street with fascination.

  Denholme struggled to find a good place to turn west towards Kimberly, eventually stopping at a crossroads on the western edge of town.

  “Ma’am?” came Denholme’s voice from beneath her.

  “Yes?” she replied, what does he want?

  “I need to stop,” was all he said. It occurred to her that he had been up for more hours than was healthy without stopping to eat, drink or rest. To her own surprise, she was impressed with his discipline.

  “Okay,” said Helena.

  As he set the tank down, he reset the tank’s AI to manage while he was gone.

  “If you find food that’s interesting, let me know,” she said as he climbed past her and out through the top of the tank. A small crowd had gathered at a respectful distance, as close as curiosity and caution would allow. Most of them drew back as Denholme climbed from the turret. The machine hummed with pent up electromagnetic energy, like a lion purring when at rest.

  Denholme jumped to the ground, dust puffing around his feet. The road was barely used. It was possible that some of those living thereabouts used hydrogen powered cars, but they would be the exception. Helena followed behind him, not quite ready to leave the relatively safe confines of the tank. As she popped her head above the hatch, many in the crowd stared at her with wide eyes. Her pale skin and topaz irises caught the rusty sunset. Their unguarded gaze rendering her momentarily awkward.

  I’m probably the first Oligarch they have ever seen, she thought.

  A number of people hesitantly approached Denholme with gifts of food and water. Disturbed on his way to find a quiet spot, Helena saw him bend down to speak with one of the younger children, who pointed to a building just off the southern corner. He, in turn, pointed at the tank before straightening up and disappearing inside the building he had been shown.

  With his disappearance from the road, faces turned back to Helena. Those holding mangos, avocado and watermelon clustered together nervously under Helena’s gaze.

  Eventually, with much pushing and shoving, they came forward in a group. The eldest was no more than fifteen.

  Most were African in origin, a variety of darker skin tones blending into the inky darkness of the evening. A few lights came on across the town; a single road light sputtered into life on the eastern corner of the square illuminating its small patch in a pallid milky light. The edges of the tank were bathed in its weak penumbra. The blue of the night sky was settling into place and the bright prick of light that was Venus could be seen rising under the protection of its guardian, the moon.

  One of the boys held up a melon, arms outstretched, his wide eyes dazzling. He said something she could not understand but it was obvious he was not going to come any nearer.

  “Lady,” he tried again, this time in English. “Try some of my melon.” Tempted by the thought of fresh food, she pulled herself slowly out of the turret, the youngsters in front of her shuffled backwards nervously. She tried smiling.

  Scanning the edges of the crossroads, she noticed that the crowd had not moved. Parents of children looked on. The atmosphere was calm, the air, cool and damp, water condensing out as dew. The kids chattered with one another excitedly. She could not pick up what they were saying, but knew childish delight when she saw it. Whatever language they spoke, it was not one she had learnt or downloaded a dictionary for. Her Secondary AI stated it would require some days to compare it with other languages she knew, to see if there were similarities that would allow their words to be translated. Shushing it she reached for the tenderly outstretched watermelon.

  No sooner had she taken it, than the boy, who, if they had both been standing on the ground would only just have reached her shoulders, leapt back with a laugh as his peers squealed with excitement.

  She held the melon in her hands and smashed it down on the surface of the tank. It split into dozens of pieces like a shattered eggshell. Juices ran everywhere, mixing with the scorch patterns left behind by the rocket propelled grenade.

  Strings of seeds silently slipped off the smooth material onto the ground. Gingerly picking one piece up she tried to catch the drips of sugary liquid spilling from the edges. A smile came unbidden to her face and Helena laughed with the pleasure of it. Her senses revelled in the slight sweetness of the melon.

  It was delicious, and even more so because of her enforced fast. Her system put the meagre energy the fruit was supplying straight into the present she was preparing to giv
e her benefactor. She chewed down to the rind. Seconding most of her nanomachines to the task of producing a small crimson poppy for the boy, she kept eating. Throwing the rind down onto the floor behind her she held out the drier of her two hands letting the nanomachines congregate in her palm. She held her hand low enough for those close to her to see what was happening. As they crept forward, she placed a finger over her mouth.

  “Shush, watch now,” was all she said as, in the cusp of her hand, first the stem then the petals of a flower emerged. The stamen and other reproductive paraphernalia would remain absent. Helena did not have the time or energy required to produce so lifelike a representation. She didn’t think they’d care.

  She heard the sound of approaching feet, assumed it was Denholme and did not look up. Just above the flower, she could make out the transfixed eyes of the children who had brought her the melon. They watched with open mouths as the flower completed its emergence from her hand.

  Even in the pale light of the single lamplight, the red of the poppy was iridescent. The colour was not quite natural, but it was rich enough for her not to care. Flipping her hand so she could take the poppy by the stem, she leant further down and handed it out into the darkness. Fingers reached out; it was the boy who had given her his melon. It was then that she noticed a sound of sniffing: careful deliberate short intakes of breath. It was not in the crowd of young boys and girls, but just away from it.

  Her smile froze. She looked up and around, her eyes immediately switched to low light, despite the arcs and trails the streetlight left in her vision.

  Nothing. No one. Just the same as before. The children who had clustered around the bottom of the tank started to look around, trying to see what she was searching for. An air of uncertainty slid into the evening. Up until now Helena had bewitched them, suddenly she seemed fragile and beyond them at the same time: something different. First one, then another child ran from the tank. The last child to retreat to the edge of the street, trying to find the safety of the known, was the young man who had given her the melon.

  The sniffing had stopped, but it had not been her imagination. Something had been tasting her scent, tasting the air for her.

  We must leave, said her AI.

  Where is Denholme?

  She asked the targeting AI in the tank to locate him. The turret turned on its own initiative until the barrel was pointing towards the building where Denholme had disappeared. She felt like an idiot. She did not even know how long he had been gone. Her stomach felt as if a circus of wild animals had taken up residence there. Her Secondary AI pestered her to allow it to suppress her anxiety. She refused.

  Where is Denholme?

  The tank was confident he was in the building. That did not comfort her. After a moment, she looked into the hatchway, pondering the prospect of going on alone. She decided to give him thirty seconds to emerge.

  She switched to her low red spectrum, hoping to detect his heat signature.

  There he is, in fact he’s coming through the outer door now. She sighed loudly, the sound like a shout in the quiet evening air. She was aware enough to catch herself over the relief she felt at his reappearance. Helena told herself that it was not Denholme she was relieved to see but that two versus one presented better odds.

  Denholme climbed back up, glanced at the remains of the watermelon as he went by, and dropped into the tank. Helena hovered, waiting, wanting more from these lost souls. Something magical, something she had been happy to indulge in, was now fraught. Tension stretched the atmosphere, distorting the delight she had taken in showing off.

  Helena dropped back into the tank, pulling the hatch shut behind her. Her Primary AI was hollering at her to leave.

  “Ma’am, I’m ‘bout ready to go,” said Denholme quietly.

  “Then take us away from here,” said Helena.

  The hovertank turned west and moved away from the crossroads, leaving the people of Kroonstad behind it.

  White Stinkwood and wild peach were scattered across the landscape, casting lonely silhouettes in the moonlight. There were no people in the bush. The large evergreen Karee, indigenous to the Gauteng region, had spread there through the climate changes of the previous two centuries. It could be seen in clusters dotted across the land, often spreading dense foliage over the road. Denholme steered around them after brushing too close had sent up a shock of startled birds. The tank hadn’t known which way to aim first as it screeched warnings to its occupants.

  Helena disabled the auto-targeting again.

  River bushwillow appeared as they neared the Vaal, the large trees enjoying the moisture the running water brought to their roots.

  They turned south along the bank of the Vaal. A troop of baboons, disturbed at their passing, angrily chased them on the ground and in the cabbage trees. The commotion was enough to send Kudu and Nyala bolting in angry dismay.

  Despite the situation, Helena enjoyed watching the wildlife, the passage of the tank bringing watchful eyes up in the night. She used the low light cameras on the tank to watch the savannah to their left and river valley to their right with a relaxed satisfaction. The calming impression helped her focus, to sort through the sounds she had heard in Kroonstad.

  The more she allowed the Tertiary AI, whose main function was to monitor her body and surroundings, to play back that instant when she heard someone taking in the air the more she was convinced it was the Hound. How it had gotten ahead of them she did not know, but getting to Kimberly was no longer good enough to guarantee them safe passage through to the west coast of the Southern States.

  The two options before her were to flee ahead of the Hound, hoping they could open up enough distance to retrieve the boy and head north in safety, or to lose their chance altogether. Neither scenario was appealing or, perhaps, even achievable.

  She wondered whether or not to tell Denholme. Must be losing it, she concluded, dismissing the idea. Too much time away from home. Denholme was not Michael, he wasn’t even Ngasi.

  The three hundred kilometre journey along the winding length of the Vaal was punctuated by sunrise, an event as brief as it was spectacular. Helena opened the hatch so she could watch it in the open air. In just a few minutes, the predawn yellows and pale blues turned orange and scarlet, ribbons of colour sewn into the fabric of the sky. The swollen disc of the sun looked flat when it peeked over the horizon only becoming round when it was clear of the ground.

  The air began to warm, evaporating the morning dew. The sun shrank back to its normal size, as if, having made its entrance, there was less need to hog the stage. Looking out east, the last few stars faded out, leaving faint pinks and indigos as a memory of the night.

  Kimberly shimmered in the early morning light, a heavily fortified compound that passed for a relatively large town compared to everything they’d seen since Johannesburg.

  The tall blank walls that surrounded it were topped with railguns and razorwire. The tank was hailed then ordered to halt more than half a kilometre from the town. As they waited for clearance to enter the centre, they were specifically asked if Helena Woolf was on board.

  Helena answered that she was. They were given permission to proceed. The gates lowered and they crawled into the town. When Kimberley had been taken over and converted into transnational territory, belonging only to the corporations that resided there, local populations had been incensed. The ensuing protests turned catastrophically violent when a small group exploded a powerful incendiary device in the entrance to Amenic’s headquarters.

  They claimed to be protesting that not only had they been evicted from the town but that they had been made landless, penniless and stateless to boot. Six Oligarchs had been killed outright. At the time there were less than ten thousand Oligarchs on the planet. The Oligarchs, terrified by the reminder that even with new technology they weren’t actually immortal, acted at once to suppress the possibility of such an event reoccurring. Dozens of suspects were rounded up, disappeared, murdered.

  B
efore long there were not very many left who would openly describe it as the latter. Still, the violence did not calm oligarch nerves, so the wall had been built, private soldiers brought in and defences installed.

  Helena got the sense, as they were negotiating their entry, that Amenic’s staff were very thankful for the walls. Unlike Mbeki air force base, it was an excellently defendable location.

  They were met just inside the wall by three men, who directed them off the road and waited while they disembarked from the tank.

  The atmosphere of anxiety was similar to that at Mbeki: not outright fear, but a familiar metallic taste to the air hinting that it was only moments away from taking hold.

  “Helena Woolf?” asked one of the three, a tall dark haired man. His eyes shone as he spoke. No trace of age could be seen around his eyes or on his hands. No wrinkles, blemishes or scars: another Oligarch.

  Helena nodded. He walked away. She followed.

  Denholme was about to tail after her when the other two men, Normals like him, barred his way. Helena motioned to him to wait. With a slight look of confusion and resentment on his face, he remained where he was.

  “You’ve chosen a bad time to leave your profession,” said the man.

  “Raeph, it’s good to see you after so long. I thought you’d dropped off the map. As for my errand, I don’t think it was up to me,” said Helena softly. What has he heard all the way out here?

  Raeph snorted at her answer.

  “Hels, I’ve known you nearly forty years. You been nothing ‘cept forceful in all that time. You telling me that now, when the world goes ta war for proper ideas that you’re laying down your will to power?” He shook his head in disbelief.

  “That’s about the size of it,” said Helena.

  He stopped walking and turned towards her.

  “Hels, if Euros figured you were the right one for this that’s ‘cos you let ‘em think it. Just ‘cos it ain’t where you thought you’d be don’t mean you weren’t angling for it.”

  She said nothing.

  “Right?” he said, waiting for her to admit he was correct.