With a few deep breaths Nike banished a slight trembling from his limbs. What his distant agent reported made it vital that the Experimentalists reclaim power.
That, in turn, made his rally all the more crucial.
NESSUS TROTTED AS quickly as the teeming throngs permitted, hooves clicking on the hard surface of the wide boulevard. His destination remained unseen no matter how much he craned a head, but it never occurred to him to use the public stepping discs that might have sped him the final small fraction of his journey. “What a beautiful day,” he hummed softly to himself. Despite the din of the crowd, several heads twisted his way in inquiry. He could not resist responding with a one-eyed blink. Why not smile? He was delighted to be off Explorer. To be home. He was so happy that his mane, although not stylishly coiffed, was uncharacteristically neat, combed and pulled back by two orange ribbons.
The walkway broadened as he neared the park. Greeters spaced every few body lengths bobbed heads in welcome, bunches of bright ribbons for the party faithful clasped in their mouths. Nessus took two brilliant orange-and-gold streamers and merged into the waiting crowd. Many had draped their new ribbons about their necks. Nessus happily followed their example.
A Citizen to Nessus’ left tapped his shoulder. “It’s an excellent turnout.”
“I completely agree.” Nessus had spoken only English with the Colonists for so long. It still felt wonderful beyond words to warble and trill, to roll long arpeggios from his tongues, to harmoniously entwine elaborate speech with himself and others—to truly talk. The Gw’oth seemed only a distant memory. “It’s for a great cause.”
“Have you been to other Permanent Emergency rallies?” asked his new friend.
“Some.” Not as many as I would like, Nessus thought. He made no mention of his long absence. Even the partial truth he was permitted to share, that he had been away on NP4, would cause most people to back away. Association with the insane was but another risk the majority shunned.
Before thoughts of separateness could ruin his high spirits, Nessus immersed himself in the moment. The contrapuntal themes of thousands of voices, the milling herd, and the scent-rich air enveloped him. And soon enough, Nike would orate.
Speaker after speaker crooned about risks and perils, about the many dangers from which Experimentalists had saved the Concordance in times past. It was familiar and exciting at the same time. Nessus’ heads, like those around him, bobbed agreement: up/down, down/up, up/down, down/up.
“Our flight from the galaxy is likely the first,” warbled the current speaker. “It will surely not be the last. Race after race must follow us, all the more desperate for their unwise delays. Imagine their panic as the wall of radiation from the core explosion draws near. All the laggard races desperately seek energy and supplies where wiser races have already refueled and resupplied. Now picture some of these needy, desperate refugees encountering the Fleet of Worlds. They detect our prudently collected resources. Will the Concordance be safe then?”
“No!” The tens of thousands packed haunch to haunch in the small park roared as one. Around Nessus, hooves pawed at the ground in anxious contemplation of distantly glimpsed perils.
“Is the danger passed?”
“No! No!”
“Is our course of action so clearly a matter of routine that we should entrust the existence of the Concordance to Conservatives?”
“No! No!”
“When will it be safe?”
It began in a thousand jarring dissonances, and then converged into a chord of tremendous power. “After the emergency!”
After the permanent emergency, that was. It was a concept too new to judge, an upending of all norms, breathtaking in its audacity—and for that, frightening in its own way. Even most Experimentalists balked at the concept. For Nessus, scarcely split from his Conservative upbringing, it remained too great a leap. It did not matter. In his hearts, Nessus knew his interest in the Experimentalist Faction of the Permanent Emergency was not about policy.
A delicate figure materialized onto the park’s central knoll, magnified many times in an overhead holo. His skin was a pale tan, without spots or other markings. Delicate filigree of orange and gold blended with the waves of his tawny mane, gleaming under the spotlights. Other than on the Hindmost himself, and perhaps on the would-be Hindmost who led the Experimentalists, Nessus had never seen such an elegant coiffure.
Nike stood, legs far apart, totally poised, in the stance of confident leadership.
Amid tens of thousands of ululating stalwarts, Nessus acknowledged a private truth. He would do anything to win the heads of, and the right to have children with, the beautiful and charismatic leader.
EVERY ARCOLOGY OFFERED many dining halls. The myriad conversations in each assembly freely started and ended, coalesced and diverged, waxed and waned to reflect the interests and experiences of thousands of diners. How could it be otherwise, with so many professions, hobbies, political opinions, and individual interests represented?
And yet, as Nessus exited a stepping disc into his usual dining hall, one topic clearly predominated: Nike’s speech. The din was inordinate. How loud would it be, he wondered, without noise cancellation?
Row after row of triangular tables receded into the distance. Nessus paced deep into the vast room, searching for familiar faces. He nudged his way into the gap between two acquaintances, settling astraddle a long padded bench. Signaled by his weight on the bench, a shallow trough of mush, a loaf of bread, and a bowl of chilled water materialized on the tabletop in front of him. The shipboard freedom to select his own diet was already a fading memory.
To each side of him, a head bobbed in welcome. Nessus knew both Citizens from the dining hall, suggesting they lived somewhere in the arcology. An orange ribbon on one and orange utility-belt pockets on the other marked them as fellow Experimentalists, just as an absence of gold suggested they were not of Nike’s faction.
A lack of contact with humans, wild or domesticated, was no obstacle among Experimentalists to the selection of a human-style nickname. In his dining companions’ case, musical hobbies provided ample inspiration.
“Euterpe, Orpheus,” Nessus acknowledged. He spoke with one-head informality, his other already busy with his food. He had skipped a meal in favor of an earlier start to the rally, and now he was famished. “How goes the latest composition?” Honestly, he did not care. It was a question likely to evoke two long answers during which he could eat.
His plan failed.
“Good, good,” answered Euterpe. Setting down his half-eaten loaf, he double-warbled a short, mellifluous passage. Partway through, Orpheus joined in. “That can wait. We were talking”—Euterpe made a gesture with one sinuous neck that encompassed the whole dining hall—“everyone is talking, about Nike’s latest speech. Did you hear any of it?”
There was an undertune of skepticism to Euterpe’s words. Nessus answered cautiously. “Some.”
“It’s amazing. No, worse—it’s unprecedented,” Orpheus said. His disdain did not hide in mere undertunes.
Nessus tapped a keypad on the table to recycle the rest of his synthesized grain mush, his appetite lost. The half-filled trough vanished. He said, “The chain reaction of supernovae at the galaxy’s core is unprecedented. The wave front of radiation that will sterilize everything in its path is unprecedented. Is it so surprising that our course of action must also be unprecedented?”
“Not the course of action.” Orpheus paused during a long sip of water, his opinion evidently too important to convey with a single throat. “Most people, well, most Experimentalists, would agree with you. Whatever our response is or becomes must surely be without precedent. But once we have followed that course of action for a time—Nessus, does it not become precedent? Has it not become precedent?”
From beyond Orpheus, a homey smell made itself known: manure. The soft plop had barely penetrated Nessus’ consciousness. The dropping was already whisked away.
Tables covered
with stepping discs to deliver sustenance. Aisles paved with stepping discs, imprinted with filters that passed excrement, and excrement only, directly back into the synthesizers. Grazing and fertilizing—the herd had done both together since before it became aware of its own actions. Technology merely made the process more efficient.
No other known intelligent species was herbivorous and only herbivores eliminated where they ate. Part of Nessus’ preparation for visits to other intelligent species had been bowel training. Once again, he felt out of place.
“Nessus,” fluted Euterpe impatiently. “Do you not see Orpheus’ point?”
Sadly, Nessus did, or rather the deeper reality that lurked beneath his herdmate’s observation. Success created familiarity, and familiarity bred complacency—even among Experimentalists. His travels had revealed but the tiniest fraction of the galaxy, but that limited exposure often amazed him. The Gw’oth were merely the latest wonder. What other surprises, what unimaginable perils, yet lay in the path of the Fleet?
In the unprecedented flight from the core explosion, complacency could kill them all.
Once more, companionship shifted without warning into an unbearable reminder of how maladjusted, how unlike his own kind, he had become. Excusing himself, Nessus took the closest stepping disc that would return him to the doorless, windowless little cube that was his home.
Nike, he realized, was correct. Escape from the core explosion was a permanent emergency, or so close to permanent that the difference could not matter for many generations.
For all Nessus’ dread on behalf of the Concordance, his heads now tucked snuggly between his forelegs, he could not help but notice the irony. The very fear that threatened to immobilize him also provided his best hope of finally meeting the object of his affections.
9
Waves crashed against the rocky cliffs that rimmed the Great North Bay. Salt spray leapt high into the air. Between crests, phosphorescent foam undulated and sudsed amid the scree. Atop the craggy heights at the head of the bay, it was just possible to sense the wall of water onrushing from its mouth. A gorgeous blue-and-brown-and-white world, the source of the oncoming tidal surge, hung overhead, dominating a clear night sky aglitter with stars. NP3’s single string of orbiting suns was doubly bright for their reflections from its equatorial ocean.
“Wow.” Omar’s mouth opened and closed experimentally a few times, but he failed to find any word more suitable. “Wow,” he repeated.
Five companion worlds meant ten tides every day, and nowhere on NP4 did the tides surge as high as in this remote fjord. Kirsten had been awestruck on her first visit. She had not budged from the spot for days. Remembering, she grinned. “Then it’s all right that I rousted you guys a little early from your sleeping bags?”
“It would have been wrong to come this far and not see this.” Eric paused for effect. “Now about coming out here at all . . .”
“You have got to be kidding, Eric,” Omar said. “We all grew up in cities. The woods we hiked in through and this rugged coast are as exotic as anything we found on the Ice Moon, but this we get to experience in person. How can you not appreciate such a spectacular view?”
Eric wiped salt spray from his forehead with the back of a hand. “You’re right. I am kidding. Good idea, Kirsten, to drag us out here—even if it is the farthest corner of Arcadia.”
The night was chilly. She raised the heater setting on her coveralls before answering. “We don’t really see much of even our own world, do we?” She let them think about that as, with a roar, another great wave smashed into the cliffs. “Truthfully, only our own continent.”
“Arcadia is more than ample. If this were our world entirely—” Eric began.
Omar cut him off. “We know, Eric. One isolated continent given over to the species preserved on our ancestors’ ship. The remainder of NP4 dedicated to growing crops for the Citizens. Kirsten, I can’t help but think there is more to this outing than the view. What, exactly, is out here?”
More to the point, she thought, was what was not out here: any Citizen presence. The closest stepping disc was half a day’s hike distant through thick forest. Not even Nessus would care to approach this precipice and its spray-slick rocks. “Privacy is out here. Privacy to discuss my doubts.”
Omar leaned against a nearby boulder. “Meaning the pre-Arcadia history files you found hidden aboard Explorer?”
“I was taken aback by that, too.” NP3 light gave Eric’s face a blue tinge. “I’ve had time since to think it through. Maybe I overreacted.”
Implying that she had overreacted. “We’ve been lied to. I don’t like that.”
“I acknowledge information was withheld from us,” Eric said. “At a minimum we were lied to about that information’s existence. But have Citizens lied about anything substantive? We have no reason to believe so.”
Kirsten felt her eyes widen in disbelief. “Why keep our history secret from us?”
“To protect us,” Eric said. “Maybe our ancestors did something shameful, and they want to spare us the knowledge.”
Something shameful? Her mind spun. “Or maybe the Citizens did something shameful to our ancestors, and want to keep that secret from us!”
Omar broke a lengthening, awkward silence. “Either way, the Concordance knows things about our past that we don’t. It’s a big file. They’re hiding a lot.” He stood and walked nearer to the precipice to stare at the surging tide. “We’re not the first Colonists to see such discrepancies.”
She remembered that Omar, too, had known about the sensor hidden on Explorer’s bridge. “Omar, who are you really?”
“You mean other than your captain: above all reproach, beyond any question, and more than a little obsequious?” Omar smiled, and Kirsten could not help but think how different this self-confident, self-deprecating man was from the Omar who always deferred to Nessus. “I’m someone who was asked in confidence by someone in the Arcadia Self-Governance Council to keep my eyes open.
“I’m glad that you arranged this secluded outing. It’s time we started working together.”
THERE WAS A bit of conventional wisdom in which Kirsten had never placed any stock, that any Colonist was only a few degrees of separation removed from any other. As she kept her eye on her cousin’s next-door neighbor’s visiting friend’s mate—who just happened to be the chief archivist for Arcadia—she thought she might have reason to reassess.
The apparent chance meeting was Omar’s doing, or at least he had brought the opportunity to her attention. Her questions about how he had identified the opportunity elicited only a knowing smile. Leveraging her celebrity status as an Explorer crew member to obtain an appointment with Sven would have been easy. The trick was to talk with the archivist without leaving an audit trail. Were Citizens monitoring the network activities of Explorer’s crew, or of Sven Hebert-Draskovics, the archivist, or of Omar’s undisclosed contacts in the Self-Governance Council? The microphone hidden on Explorer’s bridge made such unannounced supervision all too plausible.
This community party provided a perfect venue for an innocent encounter. People filled the streets, food and drink in hand, chatting and milling about. Kirsten eventually wandered to where Sven stood in conversation with someone she did not recognize. With casual nods and comments on the day’s fine weather, she worked her way into the conversation. In time, Sven’s friend went looking for a fresh beverage.
“What do you do?” she asked after a while.
“Nothing interesting, I’m afraid,” he answered. “I keep dusty old records.”
“Dusty?”
Sven laughed. “Pardon my whimsy. Of course, most records are computerized. That was a metaphor, to denote age.”
“You lost me,” Kirsten said.
“That’s one of my skills.” He glanced about for someplace to exchange his empty beer bulb for a full one. “I deal with obscurity for a living. I’m the Colony archivist.”
“I didn’t know we had an archivist,”
she lied. “Dusty old records, you say. You must know all about the founding of the colony, with all that information at your disposal.”
“I generally deal with more modern times. Production data, census compilations, weather statistics, that sort of thing. Still, I may know more than most about the early days.” He looked a bit wistful. “That may be less than you would expect.”
“Hold on.” Kirsten grabbed the sleeve of the man walking by with a tray of sliced cheese. Feigning disinterest in what Sven had just said, she took her time pondering her selection. Did her lost ancestors have words for devious and unsanctioned data collection? Certainly the vocabulary developed for the Colonists did not. “Sorry. You were saying something about ‘less than I’d think.’ ”
“Few records and artifacts survive from those early times.”
Despite herself, Kirsten blinked in surprise. “I didn’t think information was ever lost. Citizens have backups and backups of backups.”
“Of course,” Sven agreed. “That is, Citizen computers are massively redundant and frequently backed up. The Citizens who established Arcadia colony chose not to interface the recovered computers to their own networks. They were concerned a connection would be unsafe. Events proved them correct.”
Youngsters dashed past, flapping their arms and whooping, their antics random as far as Kirsten could judge. She let the noisemakers recede before cautiously following up. “Recovered computers? Oh, you mean salvaged from our ancestors’ drifting starship. Did they matter?”
“Nothing mattered more.” Sven ran a hand, fingers splayed, through his thinning black hair. He wore a marriage ring and a progeny band with three small rubies. “Maintenance of the embryo banks, real-time control of the artificial placentas, nutritional requirements of the newborns—it all depended upon our ancestors’ computers. And it’s all lost.”
“Lost? How?”
“A fire. It’s believed a piece of the recovered equipment must have started it.”