A Second Chance at Eden

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Antony Harwood’s company, Quantumsoft, had a modest office building in what aspired to be the administration and business section of town. A white and bronze H-shaped structure surrounded by bushy palm trees which seemed a lot bigger than five years of growth could account for. It was all very Californian, quite deliberately.

  Quantumsoft was a typical Californian vertical. After the Big One2 quake in AD 2058 a lot of the high-tech companies resident in Los Angeles quietly shut up shop in the old city and moved up to High Angeles, a new asteroid that had been shunted into Earth orbit by controlled nuclear explosions. The asteroid project had been sponsored by the California legislature; always Green-orientated, the state wanted the raw materials from the rock to replace all its environmentally unsound groundside mining operations. A laudable notion, if somewhat late in the day. The kind of companies which ascended tended to be small, dynamic research and software enterprises, with a core of highly motivated, very bright, very innovative staff. And, ultimately, very wealthy staff. The verticals were geared towards producing and developing cutting-edge concepts, a pure, Green, cerebral industrial community; leaving their groundside subsidiary factories with the grubby task of actually manufacturing the goods they thought up.

  High Angeles itself was one of the largest asteroids in the O’Neill Halo after New Kong, although even its central biosphere cavern wasn’t a fifth of the size of Eden’s verdant parkland. After the miners finished extracting its ore and minerals, and the verticals moved in, it developed into little more than a giant spaceborne Cabana club for clever millionaires. Millionaires who made no secret of their resentment with the unbreakable fiscal ties which bound the asteroid to Earth. They no longer had to endure quakes, and gangs, and ecowarriors, and crime, and pollution, but their physical safety came with a price: specifically Californian taxes.

  However distant it might be from the battered Pacific coast, High Angeles was still owned by the state. With its vast mineral reserves and its dynamic verticals the asteroid remained the single largest source of revenue for the legislature. After pouring billions of wattdollars into its capture and starting up its biosphere, the Earthside senators weren’t about to let its privileged occupants cheat ordinary taxpayers out of their investment by turning it into an independent tax haven, no matter how much bribe money they were offered.

  Ironically, as High Angeles siphoned off talent and wealth from Earth, so Eden drew the cream of the O’Neill Halo. The challenge Jupiter presented proved an irresistible attraction to the corporate aristocracy. Pacific Nugene was a prime example. Quantumsoft was another.

  Antony Harwood rose from behind his desk to greet me as I entered his office: an overweight fifty-five-year-old with a thick black beard. He had changed out of his mourning suit since the funeral, wearing designer casuals as if they were a uniform, open-neck silk shirt and glossy black jeans, along with a pair of hand-tooled cowboy boots.

  Some people, you just know right from the moment you clap eyes on them that you’re not going to like them. No definable reason, they just don’t fit your sensibilities. For me, Harwood was one such.

  ‘I can give you a couple of minutes, but I am kinda busy right now,’ he said as we shook hands. As generous and jovial as his size suggested, but with a quality of steel.

  ‘Me too, someone got murdered a couple of days ago. And, understandably, I’m rather anxious to find out who did it.’

  Harwood gave me a second, more thorough, appraisal, his humour bleeding away. He indicated a crescent sofa and table conversation area next to the window wall. ‘I heard what they say about you: the honest policeman. JSKP should have put you in a museum, Chief, the rarity value oughta haul in a pretty good crowd.’

  ‘Along with the honest businessman, I expect.’

  There was a flash of white teeth in the centre of his beard. ‘OK, bad start. My mistake. Let’s backtrack and begin fresh. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Penny Maowkavitz. You knew her quite well.’

  ‘Sure I knew Penny. Sharp character, her tongue as well as her mind.’

  ‘You must have spent a lot of time with her, the two of you were contemporaries. So firstly, did she ever say anything, drop any hint, that she thought she might be in danger?’

  ‘Not a thing. We had disagreements. It was kinda inevitable, the way she was, but they were all professional differences. Penny never got personal in any way, not with anyone.’

  ‘What does Boston intend to do with her money? Your money too, come to that?’

  He smiled again, showing an expression of polite bafflement. ‘Boston? What’s that?’

  ‘What does Boston want the money for?’

  The smile tightened. ‘Sorry. No comprende, señor.’

  ‘I see. Well, let me explain. For an act of premeditated murder to be committed, logically there must be a motive. Right now I have exactly three suspects: Bob Parkinson, Pieter Zernov, and yourself. You three have the only motive my investigative team has been able to uncover so far. You have been placed in sole charge of a trust fund worth eight hundred million wattdollars, with absolutely no legal constraints or guidelines on how you spend it. So unless you can convince me right here and now in this office that you don’t intend to simply split it three ways and disappear into the sunset, you’re going to find yourself sleeping in my department’s unpleasantly small hospitality suite, with no room service, for the rest of your life. Comprende?’

  ‘No way. You can’t make that bunch of crap stick, and you know it. This is just blatant intimidation, Chief. My legal boys will put blisters on your ass, they’ll kick you so hard.’

  ‘You think so? Then try this. I wasn’t joking when I said you’re a murder suspect. That officially makes you a potential hazard to other residents. And as the lawful civil security officer of an inhabited space station I have the right to expel anyone I regard as a possible endangerment to the population of said station or its artificial ecosphere environment. Check it out: clause twenty-four in the revised UN Space Law Act of 2068, to which Eden is a signatory. Boston will just have to start the revolution without you.’

  ‘All right, let’s try and remain calm here, shall we? We both want the same thing: Penny’s killer behind bars.’

  ‘We do indeed. I’m perfectly calm, and I’m also waiting.’

  ‘I’d like a minute to myself.’

  ‘Confer with whoever you want. You’re not going anywhere.’

  He glowered, then pressed his fingertips to his temple, concentrating hard.

  Despite my initial misgivings I was becoming impatient for my symbionts to start working. What must it be like to call on friends and colleagues for support whenever you wanted? Must do wonders for the ego.

  My gaze wandered round the office. Standard corporate glitz; tastefully furnished in some Mexican–Japanese fusion, expensive art quietly on show. It seemed all very cold and functional to me. I stared at a picture on the wall behind Harwood. Surely it must be a copy? But then again I couldn’t imagine Harwood settling for copies of Picasso.

  He surfaced from his trance, shaking his shoulders about like a wrestler preparing for a difficult grapple. ‘OK, why don’t we take a hypothetical situation.’

  I groaned, but let it pass.

  ‘If an independent nation were to nationalize the property of a company which was in its domain, the international courts would disallow the legality of the move, and seize the assets of that nation as compensation for the owners. There was a rock-solid precedent set in the Botswana case of 2024; when Colonel Matomie’s new government confiscated the Stranton Corp’s car factory. Colonel Matomie thought he was in a nineteen-sixties timewarp, back when all the new ex-colonial governments were grabbing any foreign asset for themselves. Stranton hauled him into the UN International Court; it took them a couple of years, but the ruling was unequivocally in their favour. The factory was their property, and Matomie’s government was guilty of theft. Stranton applied for a sequestration injunction. Botswana’s airliners wer
e impounded as soon as they touched down on foreign soil, power from South Africa’s grid was shut off, all non-humanitarian imports were embargoed. Matomie had to back down and return the factory. Ever since then, Marxist regimes have had a real problem nationalizing foreign enterprises. Sure, there’s nothing to stop them from harassing the workforce, or shut businesses down with phoney health regulations, impose ludicrous taxes, or simply refuse to grant operating licences. But they can’t own the property, not if the original owners don’t want to sell.’

  ‘Yes, I can see how that would cause problems for you people. The only bona fide economic asset out here is the He3 mining operation. Even if the people of Eden declared independence there’s nothing to stop the JSKP from housing its workers in another habitat. Eden by itself would become financially unviable; you couldn’t compete in the microgee industry market because of the transport costs. Anything you build can also be built in the O’Neill Halo, and for far less. You have to have the mining operation as well as the habitat if you are to succeed.’

  Harwood gave an indifferent shrug. ‘So you say. But my hypothetical government already has a small stake in the foreign factory it wants to take into national ownership. That changes the entire legal ball game; the whole concept of ownership and rights becomes far more ambiguous.’

  ‘Ah!’ I clicked my fingers as the full realization hit me. ‘You’re going to engineer a leveraged buyout from the existing shareholders, and probably try to oust the existing board members as well. No wonder you need all that money.’ I stopped, recalling the briefing files I’d studied on the JSKP. ‘But even that can’t be enough. You only have a few billion available. JSKP is a multi-trillion-wattdollar venture; it won’t break even for another fifty years.’

  ‘No government on Earth is going to disrupt the flow of goods from this hypothetical nationalized factory. They can’t afford to, the product it manufactures is unique and extraordinarily valuable. Ultimately, the courts and the financial community will permit this proposed managerial restructuring, especially as full compensation will be paid. Nobody is trying to cheat anyone out of anything. A large proportion of the money which Penny and other philanthropists have pledged to this hypothetical government will be spent on legal battles; which are shaping up to be very violent and depressingly prolonged.’

  ‘Yes, I see now.’ I stood up. ‘Well, providing I can verify this hypothesis, I think you and the other trustees can be removed from my suspect list. Thank you for your time.’

  Harwood lumbered to his feet. ‘I hope you find Penny’s killer soon, Chief Parfitt.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ His expression turned confidently superior. ‘But don’t count on having too much time. You might just find you ain’t gonna be here for very much longer.’

  I stopped in the open door, and gave him a genuinely pitying look. ‘Do you really think that Boston won’t need a professional police force if you ever do manage to form a government here? If so, you’re more of a daydreaming fool than I thought.’

  *

  Pieter Zernov was a lot more cordial than Harwood; but then we’d got to know each other quite well on the Ithilien. A modest man, quietly intelligent, who kept most of his opinions to himself; but when he did talk on a subject which interested him he was both coherent and well informed. It was his nomination as a trustee which made me inclined to believe Harwood’s explanation about what Boston intended to do with the money. I trusted Pieter, mainly because he was one person who couldn’t have killed Penny. The way it looked at the moment, the murderer had to have been in the habitat for at least a couple of days prior to the murder.

  A time when Pieter was on the Ithilien with me. Good alibi.

  I found him in the JSKP’s Biotechnology Division headquarters, supervising Ararat’s germination.

  ‘It ought to be Penny doing this,’ he said mournfully. ‘She put in so much work on Ararat, especially after her accident. It’s a tremendous improvement on Eden and Pallas.’

  We were standing at the back of a large control centre; five long rows of consoles were arrayed in front of us, each with technicians scanning displays and issuing streams of orders to their equipment. Big holoscreens were fixed up around the walls, each showing a different view of Ararat as the large seed floated fifteen kilometres distant from Eden. The foam which protected it during the flight from the O’Neill Halo had been stripped away, allowing the base to be mated to a large support module.

  ‘It looks like an old-style oil refinery,’ I said.

  ‘Not a bad guess,’ Pieter said. ‘The tanks all hold hydrocarbon compounds. We’ll feed them into the seed over the next two months. Then if we’re happy that the germination is progressing normally, the whole thing gets shifted to its permanent orbital location, leading Eden by a thousand kilometres. We have a suitable mineral-rich rock there waiting for it.’

  ‘And Ararat will just start eating it?’

  ‘Not quite, we have to process the raw material it consumes for a further nine months, until its own absorption and digestion organs have developed. After that it’ll be attached directly onto the rock. We are hoping that the next generation habitats are going to be able to ingest minerals straight out of the ore right from the start.’

  ‘From tiny acorns,’ I murmured.

  ‘Quite. Although, this isn’t one unified seed like you have for trees. Habitat seeds are multisymbiotic constructs; we don’t know how to sequence the blueprint for an entire habitat into a single strand of DNA. Not yet, anyway. And, regrettably, biotechnology research is slowing down on Earth, there’s too much association with affinity. That’s why Penny was so keen to move her company out here, where she could work without interference.’

  ‘Speaking of which . . .’

  He bowed his head. ‘Yes, I know. Her will.’

  ‘If you could just confirm what Antony Harwood told me.’

  ‘Oh, Antony. You shook him up rather badly, you know. He’s not used to being treated like that. His employees are a great deal more respectful.’

  ‘You were hooked in?’

  ‘Most of us were.’

  I found I quite liked that idea, silent witnesses to Mr Front knuckling under at the first touch of pressure. Most unprofessional, Harvey. ‘The will,’ I prompted.

  ‘Of course. What Antony told you is more or less true. The money will be channelled into fighting legal cases on Earth. But we’re aiming for more than just a leveraged buyout, that would simply entail replacing the current JSKP board members with our own proxies. Boston wants the He3 mining industry to be owned collectively by Eden’s residents. We’re prepared to purchase every share in the enterprise, even though it will take decades, maybe even a century, to pay off the debt. If Eden’s independence is to be anything other than a token, we must be in complete control of our own destiny.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I could sense how much it hurt him to talk about it, especially to someone like me. Yet he was proud, too. When he talked of ‘Boston’ and ‘us’, I could see he was totally committed to the ideal. What a strange umbrella organization it was; you could hardly find two more disparate people than Pieter Zernov and Antony Harwood.

  ‘I’m rather honoured Penny named me,’ he said. ‘I hope I live up to her expectations. Perhaps she wanted one moderate voice to be heard. I do tend to feel slightly out of place amongst all these millionaire power players. Really, I’m just a biotechnology professor from Moscow University on a three-year sabbatical with the JSKP. Think of that, a Muscovite living in a tropical climate. My skin peels constantly and I get headaches from the axial light-tube’s brightness.’

  ‘Will you be going back?’

  He gave me a long look, then shook his head ponderously. ‘I don’t think so. There is a lot of work to be done here, whatever the outcome. Even the JSKP has offered me a permanent contract. But I would like to teach again some day.’

  ‘What’s the appeal, Pieter? I mean, does the composition of the JSK
P board membership really make that much difference? People here at Jupiter are still going to live and work in the same conditions. Or are you that committed to the old collective ideal?’

  ‘You ask this of a Russian, after all we’ve been through? No, it’s more than a blind grasp for collectivism in the name of workers’ liberation. Jupiter offers us a unique opportunity; there are so many resources out here, so much energy, if it can be harvested properly we can build a very special culture. A culture which thanks to affinity will be very different to anything which has gone before. That chance to do something new happens so rarely in human history; which is why I support the Boston group. The possibility, the fragile hope, cannot be allowed to wither; any inaction on my part would be criminal, I could never live with the guilt. I told you the next generation of habitats will be able to ingest minerals right away; but they are also capable of much, much more. They will be able to synthesize food in specialist glands, feed their entire population at no cost, with no machinery to harvest or prepare or freeze. How wonderful that will be, how miraculous. The polyp can be grown into houses, into cathedrals if you want. And our children are already showing us how innately kind and decent people can be when they grow up sharing their thoughts. You see, Harvey? There is so much potential for new styles of life here. And when you combine it with the sound economic foundation of the He3 mining, the possibilities become truly limitless. Biotechnology and super-engineering combining synergistically, in a way they have never been allowed to do back on Earth. Even the O’Neill Halo suffers limits imposed by fools like the Pope, and restrictions issued by its own jealous population, fearful of changing the status quo, of letting in the masses. That would not happen here, Harvey, out here we can expand almost without limit. This is the frontier we have lacked for so long, a frontier for both the physical and spiritual sides of the human race.’

  Despite myself (I should say my official self), I couldn’t help feeling a strong admiration for Boston and its goals. There’s something darkly appealing about valiant underdogs going up against those kind of odds. And don’t be fooled into thinking anything else, the odds were huge, the corporations wielded an immense amount of power, most of it unchecked. International courts could be bought from their petty-cash funds. It started me thinking again about the possibility that Penny Maowkavitz was deliberately eliminated. Her death, particularly now, was terribly convenient for JSKP.