The main office was comfortably set out, with tables and chairs before wall-mounted screens. Thera had loaded a table with drinks and light snacks. Malenfant sat and accepted iced fruit juice, a blend he couldn’t identify.
‘I hope this is all OK,’ she said now, still seeming nervous, even excited. ‘I’ve never met anybody like you before. If you’ll forgive me for being blunt.’
Malenfant smiled back. ‘Blunt is fine. Why, I never met anyone like you before, but it happens to me all the time. I didn’t exist here a month ago, except as the contents of a freezer. And yet here I am asking for a hand-out.’
She frowned slightly. ‘I have a feeling that’s a pejorative term? Somewhat?’
‘Somewhat. Back in the day I started to get my own share from the Family Assistance Plan aged nineteen, the year it was launched.’
Her eyes shone when she smiled. ‘Ah, yes. I do know the history. Naturally. President Nixon’s pioneering universal benefit scheme, trialled from – 1979?’
‘1969. The year Armstrong died on the Moon. Everybody thinks Nixon was so moved by that, he came up with the idea of his benefit there and then: a living wage paid to everybody, whether they were working or not. In fact it was already being trialled; 1979 was when it finally made it onto the statute books. By which time Nixon had been assassinated, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘A lot of people disapproved of “Nixon welfare”. If you gave away money for free, people would just take it and get fat and lazy. But, as the pilots proved—’
‘The opposite was true. I know, I’ve seen the studies. People got healthier, educational outcomes improved, crime levels dropped. If people are secure in their basic human needs, they behave better. And once the scheme was embedded in America, the rest of the world’s advanced nations followed.’
‘Yeah. And so did prosperity and wealth, and an expansive space programme that I was part of. And it all went fine until we burned all the coal.’
She gazed at him. ‘Did you ever meet Nixon?’
He smiled. ‘I was fourteen years old when he got shot. I was busy with other stuff.’
‘Sorry. I’m not being terribly sensitive, am I? I’m just kind of – dazzled. You must give testimony to the Codex, you know.’
The Codex again. In time, Malenfant. In time.
‘Look, what kind of credentials do I need here? There was always a lot of security around FAP pay-outs. I mean, benevolent as it might have been, people tried to screw the system anyhow. At minimum you had to show up in person, and be a citizen of the US, to qualify. Whereas I—’
‘Oh, I see. You fear you won’t qualify for a stipend because, as a revived person, you don’t have any official identity. Don’t worry about that. There are plenty of precedents just among previous coldsleep patients.’ She tapped her own bangle. ‘Done.’
‘What’s done?’
‘You have your stipend. That’s that, first instalment already paid over. Check your bangle when you have time.’
Or, Malenfant thought, vaguely bewildered, he would get Deirdra or Bartholomew to show him how to check it, and indeed use it. Did he have some kind of bank account now?
‘Just like that? . . . Thank you. It seems very efficient. And remarkably generous.’
She studied him. ‘Not that. I think it’s true to say our values are quite different from your time, Malenfant. I looked it up, knowing you were coming. The historians differ, but I think it was the Chaos. We came out of that with a different notion of – of fundamental rights. Freedom isn’t just a question of personal liberty. It’s about rights we all have in common – my right to a decent life, versus your right to get rich.’
‘This is the idea behind your Common Heritage. Your system of governance, such as it is.’
‘That’s right. Have you studied it?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Nor will I. But the language – it kind of reminds me of the jargon of the space treaties that were drawn up when I was a kid. And that I railed against later when I was trying to find a legal basis to go mine the asteroids. The original purpose was to ensure there would be no nukes in space – nuclear weapons, that is. The outcome, though, was that economically outer space was treated as a commons – like the open sea, a commonly owned resource. You could go out and mine it and so forth, but only if it was for the common benefit of mankind, in some form. In practical terms that meant a lot of taxes . . . For sure, you couldn’t lay claim to the Moon, say. Because it was the common heritage of mankind. I do remember that phrase. So no sovereignty up there.’
‘I need to check my history. But the space precedent was significant, yes. I think it dates back to the Homeward movement, when we abandoned space colonies altogether.’ She smiled. ‘You’re an American, right? You should be proud.’
‘How so?’
‘Because America was the pioneer in all this, as in so many things. The United States was the first nation formally to give up sovereignty of its own territories – all of it was declared common heritage. A remarkable thing, looking back, after centuries of nation-states waging wars to defend that very sovereignty. But now it seems an obvious thing to have done.
‘Which is how come you got your stipend, Malenfant. You welcome a refugee with a drink and a stipend without asking silly questions about their legal identity. Because it’s not so long since everybody was a refugee, to a first approximation.’
He frowned. ‘Me? A refugee?’
‘Well, aren’t you? A refugee from your home time, in the lost past?’
‘Maybe. I don’t like the term, though. I’m no victim. I have goals.’
‘Goals?’ She seemed faintly surprised. ‘You do?’
Suddenly, before this calm young woman in her clerical collar, with her clear sense of security about her own place in her world, Malenfant felt self-conscious. Foolish, even immature, despite his physical age, his centuries of existence.
As he hesitated, she watched him closely. ‘Whatever your goals are, maybe I can help you.’
‘How? Should we pray together?’ And he regretted that immediately. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to mock you.’
She looked confused rather than offended. ‘Mock me? Oh, Malenfant, I think we just fell into a yawning culture-shock pitfall. Look – I’m not religious, in your sense of the word. Not Christian.’ She smiled again. ‘I’m not here to guide you spiritually, if that’s what—’
‘You’re wearing a damn dog-collar,’ he snapped. ‘There’s a cross on the wall outside. Isn’t a stipend what the Church used to pay preachers and monks?’
‘But the usage of the word has changed, Malenfant. More history. Look – the Christian churches, all the religions, went through a profound shock, in the centuries after your day. I don’t know it all, but . . . For one thing the way the world had collapsed around us was so obviously the work of humanity, if inadvertently. Where was God? And then there was an extension of – consciousness. People were enhanced. And there were new kinds of mind in the world—’
‘The AIs.’
‘Right. Other minds might see reality quite differently, and so might come to quite different conclusions about the meaning of it all . . . Also, some of the flaws of the various religions became more obvious. The organisations themselves, I mean. The excess, the division – centuries of religious war – individual abuse.’
‘Sounds like everybody just grew out of going to church on Sundays. And the Bible and four thousand years of interpretation has been replaced by “shit happens”. Fair enough.’
She smiled again. ‘That’s a pithy way of putting it. I do run classes. Maybe you could come address them—’
‘Not a chance.’
‘So the religions faded away. Not entirely; there are always hard cores of believers – I believe there are still adherents of a kind of academic version of Buddhism. But – when the Common Heritage started to rebuild, the old buildings, the churches and the temples, were used as refugee centres and so on. And some of the churches’ old ways survived. The old
forms.’
‘Like the word “stipend”.’
‘Exactly. Our calendar is still based on the birth of Christ.’ She tapped her stiff collar with a fingernail. ‘This thing is just a uniform. It happened before. A lot of the language of the Christian Church came from the Roman Empire, where it was hatched in the first place.’
He nodded. ‘But you haven’t been – ordained. And you won’t do this job for ever.’
‘Of course not. When I get stale, I’ll move on, and somebody else will volunteer.’ She leaned forward. ‘Frankly, Malenfant, I’m a lot more interested in talking about you. I’ve read the public files, of course, and I looked you up in the Codex. You made the news, you know, when you woke up. This puzzle about your wife, Emma—’
‘What is this Codex?’
She stared at him. ‘You really don’t know?’
‘Some kind of record centre?’
‘Something like that. More, though. I guess your advisers are giving you our world one bite at a time. Everybody’s in there, Malenfant. Or will be. All our ancestors, represented in the Codex. That’s the objective.’
‘And Emma? Is there some kind of record on her?’
‘You need to go see for yourself, I think.’ She hesitated. ‘Your ancestors, though. I checked, knowing you were coming in. Just out of curiosity. I traced your surname, all the way back to here in England, would you believe? Northumberland, twelfth century, there was a family called “Matalatant”. Means “bad-tempered”.’
‘Jeez. Stereotyping even then.’
‘Later on there were Malenfants among the Huguenots, Protestant refugees who fled France and came to America. This was around 1700. So you were in America before the Revolution.’
‘My father said there was a family tradition that one Malenfant met Paul Revere.’
She shrugged. ‘Might be in the Codex. But you yourself are an unusual case, Malenfant. You might have descendants recorded in the Codex too, as well as ancestors, like the rest of us. And living descendants out in the world.’
‘Yeah. I’ve been . . . reluctant to think that through. My son Michael was twenty-four years old when I bought the farm, not yet married, no kids. But he was young enough . . . If there are descendants, it seems kind of odd that none have been in contact. As you say, my emergence from the ice made the news, a big event in this somewhat uneventful world. You would think they would know about it, and approach me.’
She hesitated. ‘Not necessarily. Malenfant, we do believe in respecting privacy. One reason why the world is somewhat uneventful, probably. The family, if they exist, may not have wanted the glare of attention that could come with being associated with such a . . . famous ancestor.’
‘You’re hesitating again. You mean, notorious. I was a military pilot, even if I didn’t actually shoot anybody down. Maybe that puts people off, nowadays. But then, as for my career as a father – when Emma was lost at Phobos, suddenly I had a ten-year-old son to console, and he didn’t understand any of it. Well, neither did I. He spent a lot of his teen years with his aunt Joan. Emma’s sister. I wonder if—’
‘If your flawed relationship with Michael is somehow keeping his descendants away now?’
He looked at her in some admiration. ‘Maybe you should be some kind of priest after all.’
He thought she blushed. ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’
‘I guess I just don’t know what makes people tick here. Here and now.’ He hesitated, unwilling to show vulnerability. ‘I don’t think I even understand what people do all day. Or what they do it for.’
She nodded, gravely. ‘I think I know what you mean. Look, I’m not a scholar, but I looked all this up knowing you were coming . . . Your culture came from a long history of cultures where people did know what they did stuff for. You had ancient Egypt, where the purpose of society was to build vast tombs for the rulers. Or Rome, where the goal was to spread Romanitas, the Roman way of life, as far as possible – which meant as far as there were farmers to conquer and tax. In your time the goal was growth – capitalist growth – so that the future would be bigger, fatter, richer, more luxurious than the present. Which worked fine until you came up against the planet’s limits.’
He felt like arguing with that. Pointing out that initiatives like his own Bootstrap had been intended precisely to escape planetary limits to the growth of human civilisation. But he had a feeling he would be talking out of a cage of the cultural assumptions she was describing. And you’re supposed to be here to listen, Malenfant, not to lecture. So he kept his mouth shut.
‘Now it’s different again, you see,’ she said. ‘Now we – well, we do things for the sake of it, for the here and now. We don’t care if the future is better or not. Which is actually a very old way of living.’ She checked a screen, showed him an image. ‘For instance even in your day the archaeologists knew of sites like this one near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Five thousand years old. A kind of communal cemetery with stone pillars and platforms. As far as anyone can tell the builders were nomadic herders who came together to construct this thing, to use it to honour their dead. There was no sign of status, of chiefs, of hierarchy. They built it the way—’
‘The way Greggson Deirdra and her friends are building the Ostara house for their friends. Because it’s fun. Life is like a hobby.’
‘I think the Buddhists put it better. You suffer when you crave something different from the here and now. So, stop craving.’
Malenfant had had worse life advice. But his problem was that sooner or later this culture would run out of here and now, when the Destroyer intervened. So he just smiled. ‘You’ve given me a lot to think about.’
She snorted. ‘I know I have a pompous streak. Fits me for the job. Look – if you really want to know more about your descendants, or even your ancestors, the Codex is your best bet. Start with the Answerers, though.’
He faced her, and asked bluntly, ‘So what is an Answerer?’
Again, that surprise. ‘Well, you have a right to know that too. A right of access to knowledge as much as to any other resource in this society. If you haven’t been told about it, there must be some reason.’
She hesitated. He wondered if she was wrestling with her conscience, if that word had any meaning any more.
Then she tapped her bangle. ‘There. I’ve sent you the location of the nearest Answerer station. It’s not far. But look for any white Pylon.’
‘Ah. I noticed those from the air. And I had heard of the Answerers.’ He hesitated. ‘I wondered if I could find out about the Destroyer from them, too.’
She regarded him. ‘I hope you manage to get closer to your goals, Malenfant. Although it might never be enough.’
He felt deeply uneasy. ‘What does that mean?’
‘I think seeking Emma is your way of searching for home, Malenfant. A way back from this place where you don’t fit, and never will. But, you see, whatever you find of Emma or your son, you can never have that.’
He thought that over. Then he stood. ‘Maybe not. But I can die trying.’ And, he thought absently, maybe he could find out if this shiny new world really did have to come to an end in a thousand years. ‘Thank you, Thera.’ He forced a grin. ‘You may or may not be a priest, but you are sure as hell the wisest bureaucrat I ever met.’ He tapped his bangle. ‘Now to call in Bartholomew before he rusts away out there . . .’
16
He had felt calm, while he was in the diocese office, with the pastor.
As soon as he got outside, though, as soon as he saw Bartholomew’s bland, smiling face, that calm was replaced with a slow-burning rage, at the thought of how much had been kept from him.
When they got back to the Greggson home, Malenfant snapped out orders to Bartholomew. ‘OK. Here’s the deal. There’s a situation I have to resolve. I need to speak to both Greggson Mica and Prefect Morrel. But tomorrow. You got that? I’ve got too damn much in my head to process right now.’
‘You’re too damn angry.’ Bartholomew smile
d, unperturbed.
‘Don’t act like some therapist. You’re not going to distract me this time. Just bring them here. And you keep away from me, in the morning.’
Bartholomew frowned. ‘You are still post-coldsleep, Malenfant. As your clinician I strongly advise—’
‘I know the drill. I can self-medicate for one morning.’
Bartholomew seemed to think that over. ‘Very well. I don’t imagine I have much choice. For if I do knock on your door at seven a.m. as usual, you will hand me my ass in a sling.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did I get that one right?’
Malenfant had to laugh. ‘Don’t try to distract me, Commander Data. Just leave me be. Oh, and keep Deirdra out of the way.’
‘How? She is a wilful young person who makes her own decisions—’
‘I don’t care. Just do it. I don’t want her seeing me in this mood. She’s dealt with enough.’
Bartholomew nodded curtly. ‘I will try.’
Malenfant turned away and stomped off to his room.
Predictably, he couldn’t rest.
He knew how he was when he got frustrated enough, angry. None of his usual diversions worked.
He tried a few rounds of the recuperative calisthenics Bartholomew had worked up for him.
Then, on a whim, he did something he hadn’t tried before. He pulled on T-shirt and shorts and sneakers, or close twenty-fifth-century equivalents.
And went for a run.
He set out along one of those long glassy roads, through this new countryside of white and blue buildings, forest clumps and parkland. Any traffic was smart enough to keep well away from him, and pedestrians nodded as he went by. Some of them knew him, this wasn’t a large community, but others didn’t. To them, he supposed, he wasn’t Malenfant the history man; today he was just the running guy. He was soon damn hot, though. He kept forgetting what the climate of England had become. There were water fountains everywhere, which he used liberally.
He ran until his body’s travails started to dominate his consciousness, his thoughts at last dissolved. The greatest benefit of exercise, in his view. By the time he had completed a big loop back home, he felt wrung out, but a lot better inside and out.
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