Revolt on War World c-3

by Jerry Pournelle

  Revolt on War World

  ( CoDominium - 3 )

  Jerry Pournelle

  Jerry Pournelle

  Revolt on War World

  THE LOST AND THE FOUNDER

  "Call me Bill," Garner Castell said as the cop lifted him off his duff and chucked him into the paddy wagon, which in this case was an ancient Ford Econoline 150 with no seats at all in the back and a wall of metal mesh separating prisoners from the driver and his shotgun-rider. Garner "Bill" Castell told everyone to call him Bill, and often added, "I'm a walking list of debts."

  He clunked down on the corrugated steel floor and slid toward the front of the van. He slid toward the back when it accelerated. The charge was vagrancy, but Castell enjoyed the ride, his first in weeks. The van had been converted to electric, so it was a quiet ride, and he was able to think.

  Tall, with bushy brown hair, bushy white eyebrows, piercing gray eyes, an ice-breaker of a nose, stern lips, and a strong, cleft chin, Garner "Bill" Castell, when he stood straight and inflated his chest and widened his eyes and boomed his big, resonant voice, could intimidate. When the cop yanked him down from the van, Castell went into what he called his Posture Act, which was nothing less than a graduate-level crash course in body language and public speaking. "How dare you, officer?" he boomed.

  The cop actually jumped back for an instant, startled by the transformation. A second ago this guy had been a quiet little vagrant. Now here was this strutting, command-voiced evangelist. Anger surged in the cop, as it so often does, and he grabbed Castell's nearest bicep with renewed strength.

  Castell ignored the grip and scanned the crowd of passersby who had paused on the sidewalk outside Austin's downtown police station to watch some of the fun. To each and every one of the members of that crowd, who were mostly young people from the colleges around town, Castell said, "They create bad feelings the way a bad singer can ruin the hymns of a fine choir. They persecute those who, like myself, wish only to get along and be left alone. Having sought no trouble, I am beset by troublers."

  Someone called out, and although Castell showed no signs of having heard, he said, "Yes, exactly, we must learn to harmonize, we must become notes of the grand song called life, existence."

  The cop holding Castell's arm shoved him. At once cries of protest rose from the crowd. Some scuffling broke out, and the van's driver tried to help his partner hustle the rabble-rouser into the station house. Their way was blocked.

  "I've never resisted authority, when it deserved its due," Castell said. "And yet they resist my very existence, even in this mild, pleasant climate, where a soul can live simply and at peace, in harmony with gentle surroundings."

  At the word "gentle" a few college boys stepped forward and tried to pry loose the cops' grips. This caused profanity and elbowing, and before anyone knew it Castell was loose, but headed up the station house stairs on his own power.

  And power was the word, because he fairly bounded to the top. "I shall pay their penalty for simply being here, and then I shall go. In three days, if you care, please meet me here, please show them that we can gather and part peaceably, in harmony."

  And then he turned and entered the station house, where he was incarcerated for three days on a self-confessed charge of vagrancy.

  When Castell came out of the cell, his life had changed, and he knew it. He signed for his few belongings, thanked the sergeant on duty for his force's hospitality, and then walked out between the swinging doors to the cheers of a friendly, happy crowd of supporters.

  "That simple," one of the police officers said, snapping his finger in front of his partner's face. His partner said, "Bull, nothing's that simple," and was soon proven right.

  Garner "Bill" Castell walked with the celebrating kids, who grabbed at his release as an excuse for revelry just as they grabbed at virtually any other excuse. He walked downtown, let them buy him a simple meal of chile con carne and beer (an Austin college kid's staple, be it noted), then followed them back to the campus of the University of Texas. There he lived for a few days, but soon he moved into the hills surrounding Austin, and groups of young people trekked out to find and talk with him almost every day. Some never went back, and soon those kind multiplied in every way possible, including live births.

  The sight of gentle, well-spoken Harmonies seeking alms became common around Austin and surrounding towns and cities. And they were not beggars, because they always did helpful things before accepting any money, such as wash windows, paint houses, clear streets of trash, and that sort of thing. Soon they were taking in huge amounts of money from a populace generally glad to see them, generally glad to take advantage of their bargain prices and cheerful work habits.

  When youths were reported lost, they most often turned out to have joined the Harmonies in the Hills. This led to the kids being called, even by themselves for a while, The Lost.

  Meanwhile Garner "Bill" Castell refined his ideas around the central concept of Seeking Harmony with All, and his rhetorical abilities grew with his wealth and influence. Strangely to some, he paid taxes on all income, which was recorded scrupulously, and sought no exceptions from any secular rule or law on religious or other grounds. He simply harmonized.

  Eventually he bought land, then more land, and more. Soon he controlled several thousand acres of the scrub-pine hills outside Austin, and he began designing buildings. He always had them approved by reputable local architectural firms, to whom he paid generous fees.

  Questions about his past Castell answered with shrugs and laughs, jokes and dares. "Find out if you can," he told one reporter who, seeking a human interest story if not an expose of a new guru, had come all the way from New York City itself. The televised interview only served to enhance Castell's standing and increase his popularity.

  He married a young woman of American Indian and Mexican heritage who'd been brought to him by some of The Lost. They'd found her beaten and abandoned in a clump of creosote bushes by a dirt road, and it was said that Castell never once asked her about her past, either. They had a son, Charles, and were apparently a monogamous, contented couple. Castell abused neither his position nor his power to evoke enthusiasm.

  He argued, swore, smoke occasional cigars, drank moonshine, played poker, and could plug the selected eyeball of a sidewinder at a hundred paces at dusk with a handgun. He displayed several accents in the course of even a single sentence, and spoke at least rudiments of English, Spanish, and German. He also kept his word, and earned respect daily.

  Church of New Universal Harmony was incorporated, but continued voluntarily to pay taxes and fees and such from which religions were officially exempt. He rendered unto Caesar, and Caesar liked that just fine. The business deals, connections, and the virtuosity displayed by Castell's structuring of the Church's finances, holdings, and such led many to believe that their founder had once been a hugely successful businessman who had suffered a crisis of conscience. He had, they thought, wandered for a few years, until he understood about Harmony, and then he started organizing things again, this time along Harmonic principles.

  Castell died from a stress-induced cardiac infarction during the negotiations for license and the actual purchase of colonizing rights to a new world, which he called Haven. Many rumors at the time linked him with CoDominium Intelligence, but such rumors never specified whether he was supposed to have been a member or simply talked to them as he'd talked to so many other groups of self-interested authorities. Certainly selective harmonizing, or Choosing the Right Song, as he called it, would be a likely route for him to have chosen in such a bitter battle to secure a new place for his Harmonies. Except for the one occasion of his jailhouse epiphany, he always tried to sing along with the loudest.
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  He left behind him a son, Charles, who proved a reluctant but eventually very able leader, and a Church that has withstood the test of time despite many transformations.

  The Garden spot

  Don Hawthorne

  Earth Date: 23.7.2034-Wayforth Station; Tanith Sector-

  A class action suit filed by the crew of a CoDominium exploration vessel was upheld today after six weeks' review of the case by CoDo arbitrators. The suit will now proceed to CoDominium Civil Court for eventual resolution.

  Captain Jed Byers of the CDSS Ranger and his crew were prepared to bring suit against the M.I.T./CalTech University Consortium for breach-of-contract regarding the Ranger's claim of a discovery bonus for the Byers Star System. Though no habitable worlds exist in this system, the primary gas giant does possess a marginally habitable moon. The Ranger's master and crew admit that this moon's qualifications for colonial use are barely within the parameters established by CoDominium law, but it was the University Consortium's position that the very fact of its being a moon rather than a planet rendered any discovery bonus clauses in their contract null and void. In addition, reaching the new system is by no means easy; it lies at the end of several awkwardly linked Alderson Jump points, and travel time from Earth is over a standard year. Even so, CoDo arbitrators, perhaps fearing to set a precedent that might discourage initiative among exploratory vessels, passed the case upward in the Civil Judiciary, which is expected to hand down a ruling in favor of Captain Byers and his crew.

  When asked his opinion on the future of the system which now bears his name, Captain Byers shrugged and said: "That's not my problem anymore. We found it. Now it's up to the Survey boys."

  Willard Fahran, attorney for the University Consortium had little to say beyond this: "We don't see much point in pursuing this any further. The moon isn't much more than a rock, but the more time we waste on litigation, the less time the Survey groups have to find some shred of value in it."

  Mr. Fahran would not comment on a statement by Allan Wu, Science Officer of the Ranger, that "ownership of an entire planetary body for personal exploitation allows very little chance of bankruptcy."

  One Year Later. .

  "Geez, this place doesn't look too good." Frank Owens, the Navigator, grunted as he hunched over his screen in a posture that would bring misery to his back in years to come.

  "What it looks like is borderline quality dog food," Brian Connolly, the First Officer, concurred. His voice had that fruity uppah-crust British drawl, and even in the gloom of the bridge, you could tell from its modulation that his posture was correct; his spine would never dare be otherwise.

  "Cold dog food," Owens continued. He sat up and turned toward Captain Emmett Potter. "Christ, Captain; people are gonna try to live here?"

  "Most likely." Potter was the end product of ten generations of Narragansett Bay fisherfolk. Though unusually loquacious for a Wet Yankee, he had to be in the mood, and right now, that mood was not on him. There was too much work to do. He finished tweaking a circuit board and plugged it back into the sensor module. The ship's master, Farrow, had very little money to spend, and in the months since leaving Wayforth Station Potter had become something of an expert in making do.

  "Well, then, they're for sure gonna die here, I can tell you that right now." Owens grabbed his floating keypad and began making notes.

  "Well, pickings have been pretty slim, lately," Potter continued. Which was something of an understatement. There'd been a lucky run of High Desirability planets discovered and placed on the A list in the last few years, and Survey Teams were assigned by seniority. The Explorers had been getting rich on discovery bonuses, the senior Survey Teams had been getting richer on all the "Priority: Rush/Habitation Study" orders, and the Companies had been getting richer still on their increased stock values for acquisition of high investment value worlds.

  The only people who hadn't been getting rich were, as usual, the commander and crew of the Fast Eddie.

  The Edward V was her name on the roster, but her first master had been a Canuck drunkard who insisted on calling her Edouard Vee; somebody heard the "vee" in a Montreal accent, thought it was "vite," which meant "quickly" in French, the joke made the rounds and the name had stuck like a leftover curse, far outlasting the short and undistinguished career of the ship's first, now dead, master.

  Fast Eddie had a crew of eight: The master, Thomas Farrow, the flight crew, consisting of Captain Potter, First Officer Connolly, and Navigator Owens, Chief Engineer William Liu and a black gang comprised of two engineers of indiscriminate but more or less Latin ancestry named Icaorius and Mi'huelo Costanza. Icaorius and Mi'huelo being something of a mouthful, they were instead known variously as "Ike and Mike," "the Cisco Kids," or more commonly, "those Christless Spaniards." They might actually have been Spaniards for all that the officers could decipher of their bizarre dialect, but in fact, they were Basques, and every reference to them as Spaniards by the rest of the crew was followed by mysterious failures in cabin humidity, air conditioning, and most frequently, the mean temperature of shower water. Consequently or not, as time passed there were fewer and fewer such references.

  Of the eighth man, the less Potter thought about him, the better he felt. Robert Miller was very low on his list of favorite people.

  Captain Potter shook his head, thinking about how he had spent the last half of a year, and to what purpose? The ship was a patchwork embarrassment, the crew likewise, and as data began rolling in on the cheesy joke of a habitat beneath them, Potter couldn't help thinking that they were just the ship for the job. But he'd been with Farrow when the Wayforth Station administrator, Vilmer Hogan, had called them in for the assignment, and he knew the master hadn't had much choice.

  "Fast Eddie is just the ship for the job," Hogan had told them. Potter had noticed that the administrator hadn't met their eyes when he'd said that.

  "It's Edward the Fifth," Farrow had said tiredly. He didn't have much fight left in him, these days.

  Potter had jumped in before the administrator could bully Farrow into submission. "And how can you say that, Hogan? She's been laid up for eight weeks waiting for parts that your service crews claim have to be saved for ships with higher seniority. And you want to send us to a rock that's over a year from Earth? We'll be spending the next six months burning fuel to get from one Alderson Point to the next and another half a year to get back."

  "Your wages will accumulate, same as always. And you'll be reimbursed for your fuel expenditures."

  Potter had given the administrator a sour smile. "Don't insult my intelligence, Hogan. You know as well as I that we can't come out ahead on this deal even if we hit the jackpot on a Survey Bonus." It had seemed like such a good idea for the crew to buy out Fast Eddie, once upon a time. .

  Hogan had shifted in his chair, and for the first time Potter had noticed the sweat on the fat man's upper lip; he was very nervous about something. "Look, Farrow, Potter. Survey of this moon is very important to certain people. These people are eager to confirm the moon's habitability as soon as possible. I'm authorized to cancel all of the Fast Eddie's outstanding debts, return her to full operational status at no expense to you, and absorb all your operating costs for the duration of the mission."

  Potter remembered listening to the very quiet air conditioning unit in Hogan's office hum for some time.

  "Why?" Farrow had spoken first, surprising them both.

  Hogan turned to the Fast Eddie's master, but Potter felt his attention on himself. "Wayforth Station is a hellhole; we both know that. It, and places like it, exist only because they sit at intersections of Alderson Points. The CoDominium has written: Wherever two or more Alderson Jump Points are gathered together, there also am I."

  Potter shifted uncomfortably; he was not a very religious man, but he was pretty sure Farrow was, and he resented Hogan's sarcastic blasphemy in the presence of Fast Eddie's master. Hogan's attitude might also be taken as subversive by certain overzealous CoDo pers
ons.

  "Wayforth sits at the center of six such jump Points," Hogan went on, leaning forward over his desk and steepling his fingers. "That makes it valuable, commercially and strategically. It connects to several of those Gold Rush worlds where all the other Survey Teams are even now making maps for the CoDo city planners and the corporate industrial developers. Earth-like worlds, easy to get to; prime stuff for the factions that can afford them, CoDo or otherwise. As for this moon, the Company wants to be sure it's not missing out on some lucrative mining potential; the Universities are still whining about a wildlife preserve; even the religious nuts are rallying under a common banner-Harmonies, they've started calling themselves-for a place to worship away from CoDo interference in their affairs. An out-of-the-way place like this moon appeals to all sorts of people by the very fact of its lack of easy access." Hogan leaned back, his bulk making the chair creak even in Wayforth's low gravity. "But there is another value to out-of-the-way places, too, gentlemen," he finished.

  Potter had sighed. "I see," he had said, and he did.

  Out-of-the-way places were for putting things out of the way, and the things that were most often put out of the way in the CoDominium were people. Earth was still crowded, and the better colony worlds were taken, or their lobbyists were still able to resist forced refugee assignment in the Grand Senate.

  And you had to put them somewhere, he knew.

  Enter the CoDominium's Bureau of Relocation, BuReloc for short, and arguably the hardest-working bureaucracy in history. Bureloc moved product like there was no tomorrow, and its product was colonists. Sometimes the colonists were willing, more often they were not. But willing or not, they moved.

  "Poor bastards," Potter had said, as he and Farrow signed the contract for the Survey order.

  "Don't worry about your crew," Hogan had said. "Better they have something to do for two years than sit around idle."