A Tangled Road to Justice

by Olan Thorensen

  “I doubt they worry much about appearances yet,” he said. “Just having any train service at all is likely considered a major achievement at this level of development. I’ve used far worse-looking transportation.”

  I grunted. “I’ll give you that. I guess I have, too.”

  We checked our bags—two personal each, plus several boxes whose contents Millen hadn’t yet shared with me.

  “Everett, I’ll go check if the manufactory items arrived. You go pick up food for four days from the concessions.”

  “Why are we doing that? The train serves food and drink.”

  “Yeah, but they charge too much, and the food’s worse than meals we can take with us.”

  I knew the operation was well-funded enough to pay for food and drink on the train, and anyway, how did he know about the quality of the train’s food? I wasn’t in the mood to ask, so I just complied. Twenty minutes later we boarded, Millen satisfied about the guns and me carrying twenty-four ready-to-heat-and-eat meals in two bags.

  The small carry-on we each had and the provisions went into the ample storage above our seats. Exactly on time, a siren sounded, and the train edged out of the station. I was anticipating a clanking ride, but it was as smooth as any I’d ridden on Earth. Our car had forty-eight forward-facing seats—I counted. Thirty-three seats were occupied by a cross-section of Astrilians. I never learned what happened to the “d” when the locals came up with the name for the denizens of Astrild.

  The clothes we’d picked up placed us somewhere in the middle of Astrild society and similar to most other passengers in our car. We later saw more fashionably dressed society types in the rear-most cars. We lucked out that the seats behind and in front of us were empty, so we could recline our seat backs as far as they would go without getting bumped by passengers having to navigate around us. Nor would the seats in front suddenly lurch into our faces. Neither of us was particularly tall—Millen about average and myself only a couple of centimeters above that—but we appreciated having the luxury of stretching out.

  The schedule said two full days to make the 1,500-kilometer trip to Trondheim, a city of 37,000, and it didn’t take long to see why. We stopped at every town, each settlement, and, as far as I could tell, any rumor of human habitation because sometimes we stopped without a structure in view. At the real towns and settlements, cargo was unloaded and passengers disembarked, though less often the farther we got from Oslo. The crew also had to replenish the train’s hydrogen fuel at towns every so often. Part of the procedure was for all passengers and crew to leave the train and stay several hundred meters away during refueling—not a precaution to engender confidence.

  I wasn’t initially bored, it being my first look at the Astrild countryside and the plant life. Within towns, the plants were a mix of terran and local, although I didn’t notice details of the latter until we got to where humans hadn’t yet begun to affect the local ecology. Grasses were unknown on Astrild—as yet. It was only a matter of time before accidental or deliberate introductions changed that, and grasses might take over open country as they had on Earth. On Astrild, the grasses’ niche was taken by fern-like plants anywhere from a few centimeters to two meters tall. Above those grew plants reminiscent of the cycads of Earth’s prehistory, some with trunks upward of thirty meters high before splaying into heavy frond-like foliage. Scattered amid fern- and cycad-like plants were strange trees with trunks up to fifty meters high before connecting to a ball-shaped mass of foliage whose details I couldn’t make out. I dubbed them “lollipop” trees, only to find out later my catchy nickname had already been assigned to the trees by the original colonists.

  One oddity, compared to Earth’s greenery, was that the vegetation came in two color variations—a green similar to new leaves on many Earth trees and a purple shade an old girlfriend had called lilac (her favorite color). At first, I thought the two colors were consistent within each type of vegetation. It was Millen who noticed that the lollipop trees were not a single type with two color options but two different trees with the same basic structure.

  “Look at the branches and foliage,” he said. “The purple ones have fewer, larger branches and what passes for leaves are smaller. Must be convergent evolution. Something in the shape gives an advantage.”

  I looked harder at the fern-like ground covering in more open spaces. The view from the train didn’t allow us to see fine details, but with Millen’s observation about the trees, I quickly spotted the same phenomenon.

  “I think it’s the same with the fern thingies. The purple ones are generally bushier. I wonder if it’s the same everywhere and with all plants.”

  The train crested a ridge, and we got a view of a series of hills leading to mountains parallel to the train’s direction.

  “Hmmm,” I murmured. “See how the two colors fade into a muddy gray the more distant the terrain. Makes for interesting viewing up close, but not so appealing at a distance.”

  “Still . . . pleasant countryside,” said Millen, “but it’s going to be a race to see if the concept of not destroying the local ecology can take hold here before it’s too late. It’s easiest to see with flowers. They haven’t evolved here, so every one you see is an import. Humans like to take plants with them wherever they go, too often without considering consequences. That’s one of the downsides of no central government to slow the introduction of terrestrial species.”

  “I guess I can see some pluses and minuses,” I said. “Even with attempts at stringent environmental controls, Earth extinctions are still ongoing. In theory, colony worlds could help save some of Earth’s species diversity. Of course, that means competing with native species like here on Astrild, which could lead to their extinction.”

  Millen shook his head. “Some colonies make the effort to keep out foreign species, but many are too disorganized or too focused on their own issues to care. It’s not uncommon for the introductions to be deliberate attempts to recreate Earth as it once was. Still, seems a shame to bring our lack of ability to control ourselves to other worlds.”

  I confess I was pretty ignorant of what had gone on off Earth. Somehow, I’d assumed the colonies had learned from the worst lessons from Earth. I guess I was too optimistic.

  “Surely, they must consider a balance between saving the local ecology and having unlimited imports.”

  “Maybe,” Millen said, “but I wouldn’t bet on it, and certainly not without a stable government to enforce controls. What we do is a small part of bringing that about.”

  Our conversation lagged, and I grabbed my personal comm unit, the combination communication device, satellite link, and computer that almost every citizen had. I tugged the side tab and pulled out the paper-thin screen. A few icon touches and I was reading Astrild news—meaning what was happening in Oslo and the six secondary cities. It took thirty minutes to find any items about the outlying settlements. Millen was right. It was as if the main cities ignored the existence of anything not within their immediate surroundings.

  After more browsing about Astrild, I put on some music, turned down the volume on the earplugs, leaned back in my seat, and slept six solid hours. The next day was a repeat of the first: stop at every wrinkle in the line, cargo off and different cargo on, exchanging passengers, and refueling.

  At one stop, we had to wait an extra six hours while the local hydrogen station fixed some technical problem. They were letting passengers stay on the train until fuel loading began.

  There, I got my formal introduction to Edgar Millen’s Western fetish.

  “I guess I’ll pull up something to read or watch,” I said.

  “Whoa, Hoss, I’ve got just the thing for you. It’s the perfect time for you to sample the classic Westerns.”

  He stood, pulled down his carry-on, and rummaged a moment before taking out a 3D visor. The one I’d brought had disappeared somewhere between Hyderabad and Quito Space Elevator, and I hadn’t had the chance to replace it.

  “I’ll transfer a coupl
e of renderings of old movies to my visor. They’re the holo-versions, but my visor will adapt them for 3D.”

  I was about to decline, but curiosity reared its head. If I was going to work with Millen, having some idea of his hobby, obsession, or whatever wasn’t a bad idea.

  “Okay. Load them to the visor and I’ll try them out.”

  The transfer took several minutes, time for Millen to prep me.

  “The first one is titled The Magnificent Seven. It’s the original, not the remake a few years later. The second version was decent, but I’ve always preferred the original. And even the first version was a remake of a movie from the part of Earth called Japan—a movie called The Seven Samurai. To orient you to the vid I’ll send you, the setting is a rural village in Mexico about the year 1880—or something near there, I don’t know the exact time. This era is before radio, satellites, aircraft, motor-driven vehicles except for coal-fired trains, and so on. So . . . pretty primitive. The villagers are harassed terribly by a large gang, and they convince seven men to defend them against the gang. That’s pretty much all you need to know.

  “The second vid is titled Appaloosa and has a similar plot. In this case, a man with a gang of twenty or so others preys on a town in about the same era as the first vid. The town leaders hire two men who specialize in law enforcement by less than what we could consider traditional methods. The two men are hired to eliminate the gang and its leader.”

  I suspected Millen hadn’t picked these two vids at random. I was right. A little more than two hours later, I pulled off the visor to find Millen watching me with a quizzical look.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Pretty crude production in the first one. I’ll admit it took me a while to get over that and into the story. After that, not bad, but come on, it’s really a fantasy. The bad guys are awful shots and the good guys incredibly good ones. Also, a little too much hidden nobility in the seven men helping the villagers and stereotypic nasty behavior in the gang. And what about the villagers? A bunch of sheep. In some ways, the seven have more in common with the gang than with the villagers, and the ending is melancholy.”

  I didn’t know what response I’d get from Millen, but several minutes of silence and looking at a window wasn’t it. When he finally turned back to me, his expression was as close to serene as I’d seen yet from him.

  “I’m surprised, Everett. Oh . . . I expected you’d say the quality of the vid isn’t good by modern standards, but I didn’t expect you to make the connection between the gang and the seven. Since the villagers didn’t impress you, do you think the actions and sacrifices of the seven were justified?”

  “Justified? I’m not sure what that means, but they were necessary. Even if the seven and the gang are similar, the gang was doing wrong. The villagers may not have deserved to be saved, but the seven had to reestablish law and order.”

  “Well, if you’re not tired of watching, give the second vid a try.”

  So I did. Once again, afterward Millen was waiting. I hoped he simply knew how long the vid lasted, rather than having watched me the whole time. That would be creepy.

  I didn’t wait for him to ask. “I assume these two vids are supposed to prime me for our mission—the outsiders who come in to save the poor people from ruthless gangs. At least, Appaloosa had a semblance of formal law, although the lead characters defined it.”

  I didn’t elaborate that the ambivalence of the characters’ actions bothered me. “But what’s with the names? You had to figure I’d notice the names of the two good guys. Everett Hitch? Virgil Cole? Convince me it’s only a coincidence your new partner is named Everett Cole?”

  “Believe it or not, it is mainly accidental, though I’ll admit when I looked through the candidate profiles, your name jumped out at me. Maybe I looked a little harder at your record than at some of the others, but you wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t liked what I saw.”

  “What a minute. You read the records? How can that be? We just met on Geminorum Station.”

  “I got a candidate list a year before you left the FSES and I came to Thalassa. I don’t know how they flagged you as a candidate that early, but I screened those I thought might work out. I wasn’t sure who I was going to meet until your ship arrived at Geminorum.”

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. The coincidence of the names was too great, and I was developing a sense that Millen was one strange character.

  “Anyway,” said Millen, “now you’ve had a taste of ‘Westerns.’ Ask anytime you want to try more of them. I have all the classics.”

  “Out of curiosity, what’s the newest Western vid you have?”

  “Oh, there are modern versions. Remember the number of colonies. I’ve sampled vids from different planets, but somehow the ones from Earth around 1930 to 2050 are the best—in my opinion. Anyway, the newest one in my collection is Blood on the Sun from 2147. You might hold off watching that one until you try more of the earlier ones.”

  A whistle sounded, and train crewmen shooed everyone off the train. The problem with the hydrogen refueling station was solved. Twenty minutes later, we were back on board and the train began moving again. I dozed off.

  When I awoke, it was dark, and we still had five hours to Trondheim. I linked up to the satellite system and made a stab at finding out about people named Edgar Millen and Mr. White. Not that I expected success, but just in case. I got nothing at first but then had an intuition and searched for Edgar Millen on old vids. The combination came up with a couple of centuries-old vids, the first in 2D and the second 3D forty years later—both named Death Hunt, with the 3D a remake of the first. One of the lead characters was a Canadian policeman called a “Mountie.” His name was Edgar Millen. I searched deeper and found summaries and critiques. The basic story was the same: a man forced into defending himself and then accused of murder by compatriots of the victim. In the first movie, the Millen character tries to carry out duties to apprehend the fleeing accuser, even though he knows the man is justified in defending himself. In the 3D version, the victim’s compatriots hunt down and kill the accused before he reveals they were robbing gold claims. Millen has no evidence against them but, one by one, kills the four men who hunted down the accuser. In the end, Millen hides evidence of his illegal actions, and higher authorities look the other way because justice, in a fashion, was served. I mulled over why my Millen would take that name, assuming it wasn’t his real name. Did he identify with one of the vid Millens? Both?

  I quit mulling over old vids and surveyed the other passengers. Most were asleep, but I watched a young mother walk the aisle with a baby, humming and rocking her arms. I smiled as she passed. She smiled back.

  The sun peeked above the horizon as we rode through the outskirts of Trondheim and into the train station. We were in no hurry, so we let the other passengers exit first. Anyway, all our baggage would take some time to unload and claim. Millen arranged for most of it to be sent on to the dirigible field. Despite the train being six hours late, it worked out because the next flight heading our way left in only four hours. There wasn’t time to walk around, but we hailed a taxi and drove through the city for an hour, as the driver gave a running travelogue about Trondheim. The city was what you’d expect for a population of 37,000—a large central square park surrounded by offices and shops, a twenty-square block center morphing into small businesses, and apartments, then houses, turning into farms.

  By mid-day, we were at the dirigible field. I hadn’t anticipated anything but was still surprised at the six dirigibles. One looked like it was undergoing repairs, and a second had just lifted and headed in the direction of Oslo, which made me wonder why we hadn’t flown here. Only one aircraft was moored near a terminal building. Since our flight was due to leave in an hour, I cleverly deduced that one was to be our conveyance. Inexplicably, I was wrong. That one had just come in from the city of Stavanger—ours would move to the terminal twenty minutes later.

  Millen double-checke
d our baggage, and an hour later, we sat in the gondola and watched Trondheim shrink below us. On the ground, the city had distinct features different from my previous experiences, but by a thousand meters above, it could have been any one of scores of small to medium-size cities I’d visited on Earth. A river wound through the city, and I could see craft of different sizes moving in both directions. Before we lost sight of the city, we passed over a lake with both motorized and sail-powered vessels.

  As we moved into a cloud layer, an announcement told us the flight would be at 1,500 meters most of the way, except for rising briefly to 3,600 meters as we crossed the Mangelhorn mountains halfway to Justice.

  The dirigible flew a circular route and, after stopping at five smaller towns and several settlements to load and unload cargo and passengers, would end up back at Trondheim. As luck had it, Justice was the last stop, meaning we’d fly 1,700 kilometers to reach our destination 600 kilometers from Trondheim. The flight would take most of two days. As with the shuttle trip down from orbit, the sheer emptiness amazed me. On Earth, there were no places this empty except the far Arctic and Antarctic.

  It was late afternoon when we touched down at Justice. From the approach angle and the dimming light, I hadn’t seen much of the town, but what I saw didn’t impress. The town lay along the eastern side of a river running north-south. What I took for the main part of town was bordered north and south by residential areas, the southern one larger. No building appeared to be over two stories, and three roads led to the town coming from the north, south, and east. Powered vehicles moved through the streets, along with bicycles, horse-drawn wagons, and a few horses with riders.