INVESTMENTS
Lucian Valley uplift station
Anirabia Continent
FERGUS WILLEM RAN AWAY from his clan in disgust at the age of sixteen and met Trayem Hadeed – once his haepong role model – in a caravan while crossing the Rashadii Plateau. He listened to Hadeed and saw behind the veil of the Chancellory. Willem became the second disciple to join Hadeed’s great quest.
Eight years later, Willem took a midnight stroll to the upper viewing platform of the Lucian Valley uplift station and awaited the first strike in a war of liberation.
He stopped at a predetermined point along the protective grille and looked out across the station, where he had been a steady, reliable and somewhat anonymous maintenance worker for five years. The facility sprawled low across the largely barren valley about a quarter kilometer in any direction, more than two hundred kilometers north of the Lucian Wash. Dozens of commercial Scrams and uplift vessels arrived daily from the Carriers, and the facility’s retractable landing pads dropped beneath the surface. There, small vessels opened their cargo holds to receive payload from the brontinium refinement kitchens. The Scrams would leave within hours, delivering the precious ore to the Carriers.
Willem supervised a crew of well-jocks, men who maintained the kitchens. These spinning barrels, each more than fifty meters long, processed raw brontinium from the nearby mine by crushing and compacting the ore at temperatures of more than four thousand degrees using a pulse technology only the Chancellor supervisors understood. The plating inside the barrels, which were more than three hundred years old, frequently buckled and needed recasting – work assigned to Willem’s crew. The tunnels had a one-meter radius, and recasting one plate while in a thick anti-radiation suit proved physically agonizing and could take a full day. Willem once asked his supervisor why the barrels couldn’t be replaced by newer technology only to be told that this was the newest technology. Willem found this hard to believe.
He wasn’t supposed to be up there on the platform, not in the close company of the Chancellor administration. Yet Willem had no worries. Indeed, he felt liberated, as if the long struggle that lay ahead were already concluded. In his “future eye,” as Hadeed called it, Hiebimini was cleansed of its scourge, and even the bones of the old enemy had been swept under the sand by the relentless pursuit of time.
The source of hope, Hadeed told Willem – as he told all the disciples – lay in the absolute complacency of their enemy. The Chancellors, he said, were contented with their generational supremacy over the colonists; they could strive for nothing beyond the absolute control claimed by ancestors now centuries dead. As a caste, they had no purpose, trapped on the outer ring of a circle, either unwilling or unable to form a new geometry.
“To keep themselves interested,” Hadeed told his disciples in reflective tones, “they play with us from time to time. Send their peacekeepers to exact punishment where none is needed. Create conspiracies and elaborate setups, games of chance and amusement. Fondle with our Constitution. Enough to open our eyes and remind us of their importance … to feed us when we are desperate and exterminate us when we are wise. But this is all they have beyond the trappings of their wealth. Their flesh is old and brittle. When they are forced to taste their own blood, they will have no hunger for a fight. They will soothe their wounds and escape through the Fulcrum.”
From the first moment he met Hadeed, Willem knew he was in the presence of a visionary, a man who was born to change an entire world – maybe even an empire. Willem shaped every minute detail of his life toward Hadeed’s vision. Now, as he stood atop the viewing platform of the final transit point for much of the Chancellors’ wealth, Willem felt humbled that he had been given the responsibility to build the future. He felt the tiny metal object in his pants pocket and took a deep breath. He was moments away, and ever thankful of the day Hadeed introduced him to a long-forgotten secret that went by the trademark Phalyotrax.
* * *
At that moment, two hundred kilometers to the south, Hadeed made a man of himself atop his youngest female disciple. He thrust into Baqqari Adair with a ferocity even Miriam would have considered barbaric. But the young woman beneath, with her eyes of onyx and her close-cropped brown hair drenched in perspiration, offered a passionate smile with each of his thrusts, and the tears draining off her cheeks contradicted her laughter. She offered no resistance when he grabbed at her teats then tightened and twisted. He grabbed his spelling blade and ran the tip along her neck, at times just enough to break the skin. She revealed her ecstasy when her eyes drew back into her head. She moaned and reached orgasm.
Hadeed set the blade aside, relaxed and pulled out of her, but he knew he could do absolutely anything he wanted with her. The sheer liberation of it – to be with a woman without the constraints of the clans’ sexual protocols and mores – made him wonder why he waited so long after Miriam’s death. He hated the Matriarchy more than ever. Hadeed lay upon her and kissed the disciple, although his lips were deeply camouflaged within the rug-thick goatee he rarely trimmed.
“Thank you, Honor,” Adair whispered, calling Hadeed by a title he had begun to hear more often, especially in the wake of his latest sermons on the restoration of Hiebim self-worth and a newfound respect for the instinct of the individual. Although only a few had accosted him in this way, Hadeed never corrected them, never disavowed the label.
Adair cupped Hadeed’s face in her hands and locked on to his eyes. “You are so very beautiful,” she said. “The first Hiebim to know who he truly is.” She ran her fingers through his beard and kissed him again.
“Not the first,” he told Adair. “But the most important.”
His goatee had become the source of considerable admiration and was increasingly the choice of his male disciples. For centuries, Hiebim born to clans that allowed facial hair almost universally chose a full beard and kept it trimmed close and thin, matching the natural contours of their jaws. A man who displayed the audacity to avoid trimming his beard inevitably came under the direct scrutiny of the Matriarch. Or, as Hadeed called it, the Belt of Emasculation.
He rolled off her and gathered his thoughts as he lay naked on one of many braided rugs of yellows, pinks, and greens that largely hid the orange-red dust of the cave floor. The solar lamps along the floor at the entrance to his lair emitted a pale glow through the room, which was carved out of the scarp many years ago. This room had been Hadeed’s sanctuary, strategic planning center, study, bedroom, administrative office, and rectory. Although the lair in no way resembled Miriam’s immaculate personal quarters and annex, he could not help but place himself there, thinking of each moment when, after their love-making, they allowed themselves to indulge in the luxury of crimson liquor and poltash weed. He could taste her now; the lips spicy as she exhaled poltash smoke into his kisses; her perspiration like salted milk against his tongue; and her soothing whispers, like poetry transforming him into a warrior, an assassin, a killer.
“A pure Hiebim,” he whispered, at once aware that Miriam was no longer beside him. He sat up, and the disciple did the same, cuddling next to him.
“Honor,” she said. “Did you know I’ve dreamed of this night since the first time you brought me in here?” Hadeed nodded. Adair had never been good at disguising her lust. “I remember your first words at my indoctrination. ‘Truth is hidden behind a veil. When you have pulled it away, torn it from your flesh, and erased it from your mind, you will see the definition of Hiebim truth. You will see grace, villainy, redemption, and blood. Your heart will be lifted by what is to come, and your heart will be blackened by what is to come. Of most importance, you will dedicate your life to the service of the truth, even if that truth is your death.’”
He had introduced himself to so many newbs with that identical mantra, that to hear the words from a disciple’s lips amazed him.
“You earned this,” he told Adair. “In your two years, I’ve seen no one more devoted.”
“My life is yours.” She kissed him on the ch
eek.
Hadeed wondered whether she knew just how correct she was. This night, contrary to Adair’s exultation, had nothing to do with loyalty or privilege. In truth, Hadeed valued Adair only for her devotion to the cause. Her obsequious, submissive demeanor made him uneasy around her. She was, he surmised, exactly the sort of radical loyalist who could be most dangerous in times of desperation. Without doubt, she would not hesitate to kill for him. However, the problem laid in what reckless actions she might take which would compromise the movement’s ethical high ground. Very simply, her enthusiasm needed to be contained. Hadeed saw this truth only when Polemicus Damon had recently broached a delicate topic.
“There is a growing sense,” Damon said, interrupting a financial review of weapons purchases, “that heirs are not only viable but perhaps essential.”
Hadeed, sitting behind his desk, leaned back in a low swivel once belonging to Miriam.
“Heirs? Essential? Who says this?”
“I’ve heard it from at least two dozen disciples, mostly older men. They believe your children would be more than symbolic. They would give credence to our longevity.”
“Or perhaps it’s simple math. Of our three hundred forty disciples, only eight are women. Our men have needs that are going unmet. Perhaps they believe if we start producing families … what? We’ll induce more women to join us? Give them an environment contrary to the clans? Allow them to choose their lovers instead of deferring to the Matriarch? Sexual choice.” He sighed. “Tell me, Damon. Would that give credence to our longevity?”
“Or course not. As you’ve said many times, women have already had too much control over our progeny. But if you were to have children by the woman of your choice, your action would establish a new paradigm. And that is what we represent, is it not?”
Hadeed swallowed hard and moaned in resignation. “Who do you suggest?”
“Adair.” Damon spoke fast when Hadeed rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. She almost turns ‘devotion’ into a sickening word. But hear me out. We’ve talked many times about her case, about how she could be a liability in the field. If she bore your children, you could restrict her to the wash. As mothers go, she might even be viable. The Baqqari thought she might one day be Matriarch material. If she could focus on a child, the instincts that made her such a strong recruit might return.”
“And if not?” Hadeed glazed at his aide.
They sat in silence, but their understanding was clear. Hadeed made up his mind. As Damon was departing the financial review, Hadeed grabbed his aide by the shoulder.
“Sons,” he said. “They have to be sons.”
Damon could not look Hadeed in the eye. “I know.”
“Regardless of what they say, the first born will be a powerful symbol. If it’s a girl …”
“It won’t be,” Damon said as he hurried from the lair.
“I won’t let it,” Hadeed heard himself whisper.
Five nights later, he gathered Adair into his arms, pulled off her ceremonial robe and tossed her onto a braided rug. Her hands were cold against his back as they cuddled. He wanted to resist, to be utterly disgusted, but Hadeed searched his heart and found himself with Miriam eight years ago. For now, that kept him satisfied.
That, and the attention he placed upon the CV clock above his desk. He thought of Fergus Willem and wished he could see what was about to happen far to the north. The first blood of a new era, he thought. The Chancellors will never figure it out.
* * *
His supervisors would have expected Fergus Willem to be in his one-bed compartment among the laborers’ habitation stacks, which ringed the refinement facility. However, there were no explicit rules against midnight strolls – in fact, security was almost non-existent. From what he had discerned from his first day on the job, the Lucian Valley facility operated with the same casual assumptions of safety as it did when it opened centuries ago. He wondered whether the Chancellors were really that arrogant, or did they simply not believe anyone would try to disrupt their operations? Did they believe the facility’s isolation – more than seven hundred kilometers from the nearest heavily-populated enclaves – made it an unlikely target?
Willem stared across the valley, his eyes following the flashing beacons of the brontinium transport highway, which snaked into the distance almost twenty kilometers before disappearing into a rising fog of sickly green, a haze that rose from beneath the surface where the planet’s largest brontinium mine extracted untold wealth. Even from this distance, the pulsing of the core drill echoed across the valley like a series of deep, guttural whooshes. The ground vibration made for a constant presence throughout the facility.
Suddenly, a portal opened behind Willem, and out came a seven-foot man in imported leather finery, right on schedule. The Chancellor carried himself with a proud strut, shoulders high and tight, nose pointed slightly upward. His immaculate coif of thick, bushy hair and full beard left not a single red strand out of place. Willem found the man’s attention to self-grooming typically overblown for a Chancellor. The man reached inside his topcoat, grabbed his pipe, and joined Willem at the grille.
“Fergus,” he nodded. “Unexpected. What is your business here?”
“Nothing special, sir. Restless, I suppose. And you, Mr. Thatcher?”
“Nightly constitutional, Fergus. A smoke before retiring. Long day’s work, yes? Your crew? How are they faring with K6? I understand the strata plating proved to be more compromised than first thought.”
“Nothing beyond our ability. Do I detect a measure of doubt in your voice, sir?”
Augustus Thatcher chuckled but did not reply until he lit his pipe, filling the air with the sweetness of poltash.
“You people always want to read into everything we say. Are all the clans so paranoid?”
“No, sir. Not all.” Their eyes met; they shared a smile. “Our actual conversations with Chancellors are limited, you see. In case you haven’t noticed, this is a very segregated society.”
“Indeed it is, Fergus. Then again, was that not the rationale for thirty-nine colonies?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean, sir.”
Thatcher raised an eyebrow. “Oh, posh, Fergus. Do you not know fundamental history? Equality by division? Ethnic sovereignty?”
“Perhaps, sir. I recall something of that when I was young. But our elders taught us by oral tradition – many of the details eluded me.”
Thatcher choked on his poltash smoke and turned full-on to Willem.
“Oral? Are you playing me for a fool?”
“No, sir. That’s always been our way.”
“What? Are you saying your education did not include vids or holodemics?”
“Generally, no. Later, we had access as a luxury but …”
“This explains a great deal. I suggest you purchase a holodemic and learn the origins of the Collectorate for yourself. By all means distribute the device to your clansmen.”
“Sir, I think you mis …”
“Honestly, Fergus. When I hear the stories about you people, I am amazed the human race has traveled among the stars for two thousand years. Is it little wonder you people remain completely dependent upon Chancellor resources in time of need? I’m sure it matters little to you, but the other sovereign ethnics have made great strides compared to the Hiebim. If you people will not stand up for your basic …”
“Sir, excuse me. Sir. My name. I go by Willem.”
Thatcher took a step back, looking Willem up and down as if mortally insulted.
“Yes? I’m sure you do, when in the proper company. Posh, Fergus. Have you not been taught basic intercaste etiquette? Personal monikers are unacceptable in standard practice of …”
“I’m well aware of this, Mr. Thatcher. But we have been part of the same team for almost two years now. I would have thought …”
“Don’t, Fergus. Also don’t make the mistake of believing we’re on the same team. We’re here to ensure successful refinement. Bey
ond that, our goals have nothing in common.”
Willem enjoyed this banter. It stoked his blood pressure, but every word was also a reaffirmation of the choices he would soon be making.
“I see, sir. If I might humbly ask, what are your goals?”
“Not that it’s any business of yours, Fergus. However, when I retire from this assignment in two years, my wife and I will be staking our claim to a lovely estate on Xavier’s Garden.” He puffed from his pipe and nodded. “Therein lies the difference in our goals. I will collect my bonding revenue from corporate, plus fifty diodes of brontinium. You will exhaust your energies on strata plating while your clansmen dig clay.”
“Very possible, sir. I can’t argue. But if I may, Mr. Thatcher. You say corporate will give you fifty diodes free and clear? That’s a massive stock. If I may ask, sir – and this is something that’s puzzled me for a long time – what is all this brontinium actually used for?”
Thatcher frowned. “What do you mean, Fergus?”
“The ore. It’s incredibly expensive to mine and refine, so it must be of great value to the Chancellors. I was curious, sir.”
Thatcher emptied his pipe against the grille and tucked it away inside his topcoat.
“You people will never learn. All you need to know, Fergus, is that brontinium is used for the benefit of the entire Collectorate.”
“Entire? Including Hiebimini?”
“But of course. Think of all the wealth it brings. Do you realize Hiebimini supports more Ark Carriers than any other colony?”
“Yes, I did. Carriers filled with Chancellors and giant brontinium-plated statues.”
“Oh, posh. Don’t you dare say a word about our largesse. Each of those Carriers is a product of hard work and ingenuity dating back centuries. We are proud of our origins and our forefathers. We have tradition. If I didn’t know better, I would think you are insinuating things that are better left unsaid. We give to you people out of the softness of our hearts. The clans made their pitiful choices long ago. We are better than you for the simplest of reasons: We choose to be better. Not that you can’t change your ways, of course. You’re human, as hard as that sometimes is to believe. If you truly wanted to improve your lot, I dare say you could work through your shortcomings and realize certain … gains.”
The Father Unbound Page 16
