“There they are, my four favorite young people,” the old man said. “Mosey up to the bar and grab a drink; I got things to discuss with you.”
After helping themselves to TK's well stocked bar, the young officers and scientist were seated in the living room's spacious conversation pit—a recessed area in the floor lined with built in seating. On one side of the pit was a large fireplace where a comforting fire blazed warmly.
The fire was a hologram; no one, not even a billionaire, could afford to import wood simply to burn. The oxygen use alone would set off alarms. A fake it might be, but it was a very good fake; slowly burning down over the course of an evening, occasionally throwing a shower of heatless sparks onto the hearth.
“Your fire is ever so lifelike, TK. I marvel every time I see it,” said Beth, carefully balancing her third martini of the evening on her knees. “Are you planning to sell copies to the public? I should think it would turn a reasonable profit.”
“Sooner or later,” replied TK, “right now it's one of a kind. In fact, I'm still tinkerin' with it.”
“Here we go,” said Maria. “He just loves showing off his toys.” TK made a few finger swipes across the face of his wrist watch and the room went away.
It took several moments for their eyes to adjust to the lowered lighting. In place of the walls and ceiling were low dark hills with scattered clumps of scrub; overhead, stars twinkled and a shooting star streaked across the heavens. As the group fell into stunned silence the sound of crickets could be heard, along with the occasional lowing of cattle. The fireplace was now a campfire, illuminating the circle of friends with welcome light—a bucolic nocturne in an open field.
“Wow!” said Bobby, “It's like we're sitting in a field back in Texas cattle country!”
“That's the effect I was shooting for, Bobby,” the old man chuckled.
“Except the seating is more comfortable than a bedroll,” added Billy Ray. “And I notice that the bar is still there.”
“Yeah, I was going to have 'em change the bar into a chuckwagon but decided that was a bit too hokey.”
“It is very beautiful,” said Mizuki, “very tranquil.”
“Humans in our natural habitat,” mused Beth. “I wonder if future generations will feel at home in such a setting, after being born and raised inside space stations and on board starships?”
“I sure hope so,” said Billy Ray, feeling a bit underdressed without a cowboy hat and boots.
“Yeah, there is just something about looking up at a night sky that gets a feller thinking,” said TK, hinting that there was something specific on his mind.
“And what does it make you think of, TK?” asked Beth, taking the bait.
“Fermi's Paradox comes to mind, young lady. Are you familiar with it?”
“Are you referring to the physicist Enrico Fermi?” asked Mizuki.
“The very same, Mizuki, the very same,” said TK with a smile as he warmed to his subject. “You see, three quarters of a century ago, Dr. Fermi looked up at the night sky and asked a simple question: 'where is everybody?'”
Those assembled around the fire looked at one another and then back at the old man. TK took a sip of his whiskey and then leaned forward—this was not his first time telling a tale in front of a campfire.
“As Miss Mizuki said, Enrico Fermi was a physicist, and a rather famous one. When he looked at the night sky he looked through a scientist's eyes. What he saw was billions of stars, each possibly harboring a planet like Earth. Moreover, he realized that the Sun was only about five billion years old and that many stars were much older than that. Assuming that the occurrence of life was not unique to our planet, this meant that there should be bunches of older, more advanced aliens running around the galaxy.
“On top of that, given even fairly rudimentary space travel, an advanced civilization should be able to colonize or conquer the entire Milky Way in maybe 10 million years or so—the blink of an eye in terms of the age of the Universe. All this led Enrico to ask why we hadn't seen any aliens. In fact, we hadn't even detected any signals from aliens.”
“Well, TK,” Billy Ray began, “I think we found out why no one came by for a social call when we found them varmints hidin' here on the Moon.”
“Yeah,” said Bobby, “any time a civilization got to the radio and rocket ship stage the Dark Lords sent their minions to wipe 'em out.”
“I think that probably had a chilling affect on interstellar socializing,” add Beth, with a bit of British understatement.
“I suppose you children are right, the Dark Lords put the kibosh on the galaxy's social scene. But that still doesn't mean that many alien civilizations didn't start to develop.”
“That is correct, Parker-san. There are estimated to be 200 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. NASA said there might be eight billion Earth-like planets circling Sun like stars. In recent times astronomers began looking for exosolar planets in earnest, which caused the estimate of possible life bearing planets to rise significantly. Include red dwarfs and the estimate rises to 40 billion habitable planets in our galaxy alone.”
“Right you are, darlin'. Possibly billions of worlds that might have risen to the level of ancient China or India, or the Roman Empire. Maybe even as advanced as the early Industrial Revolution, yet to be quashed by the Dark Lords. Wouldn't it be nice if we could find some of these civilizations and offer 'em protection?”
“That seems very noble, TK, but you have never struck me as all that altruistic,” Beth observed.
“Now, girl, you do me a great disservice,” said TK, feigning hurt feelings. “After what we just went through I was thinking it might be a good idea to go looking for some prospective future allies... and maybe some trade opportunities.”
“Trade opportunities?” said Billy Ray. “Now that sounds more like the TK Parker we all know and love.”
“OK, fine. So I don't see anything wrong with makin' a little something for yourself while helping out some fellow beings. And with the Colonization Board about to start sending ships full of settlers off to the stars, I think it might be a good thing for any undiscovered aliens if we got to them first.”
“That is probably true,” said Bobby, “given our own species' history of colonization and conquest. It wouldn't take much for a ship full of humans with advanced technology to subjugate a primitive native race.”
“So what are you proposing, TK?” asked Beth.
“What I and a couple of partners from the council are proposing is forming a trading company—the Honorable Orion Arm Trading Company. The company would send out agent captains to explore this region of the galaxy, establish trade relationships with alien species and identify worlds available for colonization. The captains, crews, and of course the partners back here, would all share in the profits of the venture.”
“Why does this sound familiar?” asked Billy Ray.
“Because of the Honorable East India Company,” said Beth, “through which England controlled much of the world during the 18th and 19th centuries. And often not all that benignly.”
“Yes indeed,” said TK, “at the time it was a radical, unprecedented idea—an empire built on trade and commerce instead of military conquest. As one historian labeled it: 'An anomaly without parallel in the history of the world'. ”
“So you say, TK,” said Maria. Undoubtedly, TK had been practicing his pitch on his betrothed.
“Come on, mi corazón, we don't want to rule a bunch of aliens, we want to make money trading with 'em.”
“Assuming we decide to sign on for this little venture, where are you going to get the ships?” Billy Ray asked, his mind already jumping ahead to the planning of such a voyage.
“We will eventually build our own—armed merchant ships that can take care of themselves in a tough situation—but for the first expedition we will have to use resources at hand.”
“What resources?” asked Bobby.
“Except for Cdr. Melaku you've all sailed in her,
” TK said with a large smile, “my yacht, the Peggy Sue.”
Apt 31, Refugee Housing, Farside
Seated on cushions around a low table, three men were having a discussion over brunch. Drinking small cups of tea made from cardamon and eating dates from a shared bowl, each was careful to use only his right hand. Eschewing the free, government issued jumpsuits, they were dressed in the traditional garb of their people.
After the alien bombardment and near annihilation of the human race, it was decided that, in the words of the immortal Robert Heinlein, Earth was just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in. As a consequence, the ruling council instituted an aggressive policy of relocating survivors to other human outposts across the solar system. Mars received the largest portion, but the asteroid belt and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn absorbed a goodly number as well—all survivors rescued from the surface of humanity's battered home planet.
Construction of the new Earthside lunar city was well underway, holding the prospect of a new life for hundreds of thousands more, but even that was not considered enough by the council. They would not be satisfied until humanity had successfully planted colonies on planets circling other stars.
For the Fleet, this posed a daunting challenge, for they were expected to defend all humanity. If people eventually spread to planets outside the solar system the Fleet's responsibilities would increase. Currently, the Fleet's policy was to ignore colonists until they successfully settled an exosolar planet. On the other hand, the proposed human diaspora provided plenty of justification for expanding the Fleet's starships and Marines.
A number of interstellar transports were under construction, both in the yards at Farside and at Olympus Mons. Very soon the first settlers would be sent out into the Orion Arm to begin man's colonization of the galaxy. In looking for good prospective colonists, small, close-knit communities that had experience living self sufficient lives under isolated circumstances were given preference. The representatives of three such groups of refugees were meeting to discuss their impending voyage to a new home.
Each of the three groups had been rescued from small agrarian settlements back on Earth. Moreover, each group contained only members of a single religious sect: one Jewish, one Christian and one Islamic. It was felt by those arranging the voyages of colonization that the uniformity within such groups might give them an edge over a group of randomly selected strangers. It was also felt that the religious nature of the three groups might give them better ability to deal with adversity.
There is no doubt that religion has served humans as a positive survival trait in the past. Indeed, nearly every organized group of humans either created or adopted a set of religious beliefs in the past. Religion provides a way to transmit and enforce a set of social values and societal norms among groups larger than extended families. Over the course of human history tribes have had gods, cities have had gods, nations have had gods, even whole empires have had gods. Of course, when different people with different beliefs met it often meant war and strife.
Quite frequently, warriors had ridden out for the expressed purpose of spreading the worship of their god to heathen lands. By comparison, no band of militant atheists ever invaded a bordering nation for the express purpose of bringing non-belief to the god fearing. Modern communists do not count as they substituted their political beliefs for traditional religious ones; in a sense, making worshiping the state its own religion.
Whether religion's net contribution to human development has been positive or negative, whether it has brought more comfort and peace than tension and strife, is still a topic of debate among scholars and theologians. As with other fields of human endeavor, there have been good religious persons and bad. The saintly and compassionate have inspired millions over the ages while scoundrels, madmen and fiends have all used religion as cover for their misdeeds. It was from the latter end of the religious spectrum that the three men in apartment 31 descended.
Rabbi Yitzhak Menaheim was the authoritarian leader of an ultra orthodox Jewish sect branded the Jewish Taliban for its strict interpretation of their faith. An offshoot of Ontario based Rabbi Shlomo Helbrans' Lev Tahor, or “Pure Heart,” isolationist sect, Rabbi Menaheim's followers also hid themselves from the world, lest they be corrupted. Like the Lev Tahor, the sect's men and boys were indistinguishable from other orthodox Jews. The women and girls, however, followed dress restrictions not found in mainstream Jewish orthodoxy.
Rarely seen outside of their homes, they were shrouded head to toe in black robes from the age of three, even their faces hidden behind burqa like veils, behavior more reminiscent of Islam than Judaism. The sect's resemblance to conservative Muslims no doubt helped inspire the “Jewish Taliban” tag. Strangely they did not shy away from the label. It was said that the Rabbi exerted absolute control over his followers lives: telling them when to rise, when to go to sleep, what to eat, who to marry and when to have children.
The second of the three groups was led by Mustafa Al-Ghazali, a self proclaimed Imam and Sufi mystic. Al-Ghazali was thought to have adopted the name of the famous 11th century Muslim theologian Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali. The historic al-Ghazali was of Persian descent, as was this later day cult leader. Imam Mustafa preached strict adherence to the Hadith and Shariah law, the traditional moral code and religious law of Islam.
Like Rabbi Menaheim he forced his followers to adopt traditional patterns of dress, the women covered from head to toe by the hijab. Interestingly, Mustafa's interpretation of the hijab left his women's faces exposed in the Iranian style, unlike the Rabbi's sect. This was not to say that Imam Mustafa was in any way a liberal progressive. In his world women were chattel and totally controlled by their men.
Salat, the formal prayer at the heart of Muslim worship, was performed the required five times of day. Beyond the teaching's of The Prophet, the Imam's followers lived under strict discipline, much like in the Jewish sect of Rabbi Menaheim. When not praying or working, his followers were expected to memorize verses from the Qur'an.
While not practicing as severe a dress code as the other two groups, the nominally Christian Or Hashem, or “God's Light,” were definitely not slaves to fashion. Back on Earth they dressed in simple clothes, made from homespun cloth dyed in blacks and browns. What they thought of the standard issue tan jumpsuits provided by Farside base remained unknown. What was known is that their leader, Abraham Creshe—known as Brother Abraham among his flock—led his followers into the mountains of Montana to avoid being arrested.
It seems that Brother Abraham was an enthusiastic proponent of polygamy and had a penchant for very young girls. He was wanted in several states for transporting minors across state lines for immoral purposes. Within his sect he told members who was to marry whom, though he reserved the right to sleep with any woman among his flock. His theology was a strange amalgam of fundamentalist Christianity and Mormonism, though certainly, neither of those religions would condone his teachings or sexual depravity.
It might seem improbable that three authoritarian, religious fanatics from three different faiths, each harboring messianic delusions, would set down voluntarily to plan a combined trip of emigration to another world. In truth, the three sects had more in common with each other than they had with most residents of the Moon base. As much as the three leaders despised one another, they hated the godless masses and secular leadership of Farside base even more. What they wanted most of all was to lead their followers away from this lunar den of iniquity before the tainted beliefs of the surrounding infidels could poison the minds of the faithful.
“So we are agreed that we will only take food animals with us that are halal,” said Imam Mustafa. “Nothing haram will be allowed on the ship.”
“Agreed,” said Rabbi Menaheim, “we must keep kosher when it comes to diet.” The dietary strictures of both Jewish and Islamic faiths were basically the same, being based on the same ancient scriptures.
“Thou
gh I believe what Jesus said—it's what comes out of a man's mouth that makes him unclean, not what he puts in it—I will agree,” said Brother Abraham with a beneficent smile, “for the sake of harmony.” Though God knows I'll miss bacon.
“And the ship's passenger compartments are to be split into three sections, only accessible by single entrance ways,” added Rabbi Menaheim, thinking, I do not want my flock mingling with you godless shkotzim.
“Certainly,” responded Imam Mustafa, you kafir dog.
“That sounds reasonable, my friends,” said Brother Abraham, if that will keep your heathen hands off my women. “So it is agreed, we shall approach the Colonization Board with a mutual request for a ship so we can depart as soon as possible?”
“Metzuyan! The sooner the better!”
“Tayeb,” finished the Imam, “yella, we go.”
With that, the three leaders arose and headed for the administrative offices seeking a meeting with the authorities they despised. They did not even care which star they were sent to—surely God would provide for his faithful. As the door closed behind the trio, women swathed in black robes scurried into the room to remove the coffee cups and straighten the pillows.
Atrium Restaurant, Farside
The morning after TK's campfire discussion, the three officers all resigned their commissions in Earth's Space Navy. On their way to Fleet HQ, the four friends agreed to meet for lunch at the restaurant overlooking the Atrium just before noon.
Mizuki and Bobby already occupied a table when Beth and Billy Ray entered the large, second level restaurant. Being just outside of the base administrative offices, the restaurant was always crowded, even though the food was unremarkable. Mizuki was dressed in her usual science section maroon, but Bobby was wearing the plain tan of a civilian resident of Farside, as were Beth and Billy Ray.
T'aafhal Legacy 1: Ghosts of Orion Page 3
