Most people upon receiving a message from a Halgarth opened it from sheer curiosity. When the visual recording started to play they realized they’d been shotgunned, and ninety per cent wiped it immediately. The rest let it run, either out of native inquisitiveness, the prospect of filing a shotgun suit against a Halgarth, they were fellow extremist freedom fighters, it was useful raw material for their dissertation on modern political factions, or quite simply because they were among those rare few who believed.
The visuals opened with a man in an office, sitting behind a desk, with the snow-cloaked city of San Matio, Lerma’s capital, spread out panoramically through the window-wall behind him. His face boasted strong features that were high-lighted by dark skin, while neatly trimmed brown hair was threaded with a few silver strands. It emphasized the kind of authoritative air that inspired confidence, marking him down as a positive, progressive leader. (Forensic analysis showed he was a graphics composite, designed by the Formit 3004 simulator package, using its politician sculpture function.)
‘Sorry to burst in on you like this,’ he said. ‘But as you probably know, the government spends a lot of tax money into hunting down our group. Contrary to the Commonwealth charter which permits free public assembly, I am not allowed to say what I want to other citizens. I represent the Guardians of Selfhood. And before you wipe this message, I have one question to ask you. Why has the Senate and the executive chosen to send a starship to the Dyson Pair? Specifically, why now?’
There was a perspective shift in the pause while the man drew a realistic breath. The observer point moved forwards and down, sitting in front of the desk, closer to the spokesman. It was a cosier setting, giving the impression of a one-on-one chat.
‘As you know, we are campaigning against the Starflyer, an alien we contend is actively influencing the Commonwealth’s political classes for its own advantage. It is this Starflyer which has engineered the current mission to investigate the Dyson Pair. The Commonwealth has known about the enclosure of the two stars for centuries. We have known that one day, when phase six space is opened, we would reach these strange stars and begin our investigation. What has changed? A single observation that proved the enclosure was a force field rather than a solid shell. Exactly why should that reverse centuries of Commonwealth policy?’
The spokesman shook his head solemnly. ‘Possibly the most critical human voyage of exploration since Columbus set sail has been launched without any valid explanation. The question was not debated openly in the Senate, despite the vast amounts of public money being spent to finance the starship. Instead, the decision emerged from some obscure ExoProtectorate Council that nobody had ever heard of before. It is exactly the kind of clandestine back-room deal that favours the Starflyer and its agenda.’
Perspective shifted again, sweeping the viewer out through the window to soar over the complicated maze of San Matio’s streets. ‘Somewhere out there it lurks, controlling and influencing us through its puppets. Government and their media manipulators ask how we know the Starflyer is malign. The answer is simple, if it is a friend, it would reveal itself to us and the other alien affiliates of the Commonwealth. If it is a friend, it would not push us into sending an expedition to the Dyson Pair. The President says we need to know what happened. He is mistaken. We know what must have happened. Shielding two entire star systems with force fields is an act of extreme desperation. Something terrible was about to be unleashed, some-thing that warranted such colossal countermeasures. These barriers have kept the threat isolated from the rest of the galaxy for over a thousand years. We are safe because of that. This wonderful city, and thousands like it across the Commonwealth, sleep soundly at night because the threat is contained. Yet now we are being sent out there to tamper with the dangerous unknown. Why? What was wrong with our old policy of caution? By the time we reach phase six space we would probably know how to generate force fields of such a size, we would certainly comprehend the science and technology involved. We would not be endangering anybody, least of all ourselves.’
The view slid back into the office, establishing eye contact with the spokesman again. ‘Why was no public debate allowed? The Starflyer does not want that. Why is there an urgent need to visit the Dyson Pair? The Starflyer wants us to. Why does it want that? Consider this: the Starflyer has travelled hundreds of light-years across the galaxy. It knows what lies within the barrier. It has seen the danger there.
‘All that we ask is that you resist its strategies and deceits. Question your senator, your planetary or national leader. Demand from them a full explanation why your tax money is being spent on this undemocratic recklessness. If they cannot satisfy you, then demand your rights. Demand this monstrosity be stopped.’
The spokesman bowed his head in respect. ‘I thank you for your time.’
*
The star was a blue dwarf formally named Alpha Leonis, and more commonly referred to as Regulus by intrigued astronomers on Earth, back in the days when there was such a thing as astronomy on the old world. They also found its companion star, Little Leo, an orange dwarf; which itself had a companion, Micro Leo, a red dwarf. This cosy threesome were situated seventy-seven light-years from Sol, an unusual system that attracted quite a degree of interest and observation time.
Then in 2097, CST discovered an H-congruent planet orbiting a long way out from the primary, and christened it Augusta. For Nigel Sheldon it was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. At that time the Human Intersolar Commonwealth was being formed, and the UFN on Earth was enacting the first wave of its global environmental laws. With Regulus in a strategically important position to expand the CST net-work into the already envisaged phase two space, Nigel claimed it for the company. He transported every single CST manufacturing facility out there, and went on to welcome any other factory which was suffering from Earth’s difficult new regulations. It became the first of what eventually were known as the Big15.
There was no culture to speak of on Augusta, no nationalist identity. It was devoted solely to commerce, the manufacture of products, large or small, which were shipped out across the Commonwealth. New Costa sprang up along the sub-tropical coast of the Sineba continent, the only city on the planet, home, in 2380, to just over a billion people. A centreless urban sprawl of factories and residential districts stretching for more than four hundred miles along the shore, and up to three hundred inland.
For all its crass existence, the megacity had a sense of purpose upon which all its inhabitants thrived. They were here for one thing: to work. There were no native citizens, everyone was technically a transient, earning money as they passed through. A lot of money. Some stayed for life after life, workaholics sweating their way up through the company which employed them, subtly remodelling themselves with every rejuvenation to give themselves the edge over their office rivals. A few stayed for one life, entrepreneurs working their asses into an early rejuvenation, but making a fortune in the process. However, the vast bulk of people lived there for sixty to ninety years, earning enough to buy into a good life on a more normal planet by the time they finally left. They were the ones who tended to have families. Children were the only people who didn’t work on Augusta, but they did grow up with a faintly screwed view of the rest of the Commonwealth, believing it to be made up from romantic planets where everyone lived in small cosy villages at the centre of grand countryside vistas.
Mark Vernon was one such child, growing up in the Orangewood district at the south end of New Costa. As districts went, it was no better or no worse than any other in the megacity. Most days the harsh sunlight was diffused by a brown haze of smog, and the Augusta Engineering Corp, which owned and ran the megacity, wasn’t going to waste valuable real estate with parks. So along with his hood buddies he powerscooted along the maze of hot asphalt between strip malls, and hung out anywhere guaranteed to annoy adults and authority. His parents got him audio and retinal inserts and i-spot OCtattoos at twelve so that he was fully virtual, because that was the a
ge for Augusta kids to start direct loading education. By sixteen he was wetwired for Total Sensorium Interface, and receiving his first college year curriculum in hour-long artificial memory bursts every day. He graduated at eighteen, with a mediocre degree in electromechanics and software.
Ten years later, he had a reasonable job at Colyn Electromation, a wife, two kids of his own, a three-bedroom house with a tiny pool in the yard, and a healthy R&R pension fund. Statistically, he was a perfect Augusta inhabitant.
When he drove home that particular Friday evening, he wanted nothing more than to scream at the planet where it could shove his exemplary life. For a start he was late out of the plant. The guy on the next shift had called in sick, and it took the duty manager an hour to get cover organized. This was supposed to be Mark’s family day, the one where he got home early and spent some quality time with those he loved. Even the traffic didn’t want that to happen. Cars and trucks clogged all six lanes on his side of the highway, corralling his Ford Summer. Even with the city traffic-routing arrays managing the flow, the sheer volume of vehicles at this time of the evening slowed everybody down to a thirty-five-mile-an-hour crawl. He’d wanted a house nearer the factory, but AEC didn’t have any to rent in those districts, so he had to make do with the Santa Hydra district. It was only ten miles inland, but that put it uncomfortably close to the Port Klye sector, where one of New Costa’s nests of nuclear power plants was sited.
Mark opened the Summer’s side window as they turned off the highway and onto Howell Avenue which wound through the Northumberland Hills. It was a district which senior management favoured; long clean boulevards lined by tall trees, where gated drives led off to big houses in pretty emerald enclaves surrounded by high walls. There was very little crime on Augusta – at least, non-corporate crime – and those in such secluded houses just enjoyed the sense of physical separation from the rest of the megacity. Low sunlight gleamed off the district’s buildings and sidewalks, creating a hazy lustrous shimmer. He breathed in the warm dry air, trying to relax. As always when the tiny blue-white sun sank down towards the horizon, the warm El Iopi wind blew out of the southern desert towards the sea. It swept the day’s pollution away, along with the humidity, leaving just the scent of blossom from the trees and roadside bushes.
During his childhood, his parents had taken him and his siblings out into the desert several times, spending long weekends at oasis resorts. He’d enjoyed the scenery, the endless miles of flinty rock and sand, with only the rainbow buds of the scrawny twig-like native plants showing any colour in that wasted landscape. It was a break from the megacity which was all he’d known. The rest of Sineba wasn’t worth visiting. That which wasn’t desert had long since been put to the plough. Giant mechanized farms had spread across the continent’s prairies, ripping up native plants and forests, and replacing them with huge fields of GM high-yield terrestrial crops, their leaves awash with pesticides and roots flooded with fertilizer. They poured a constant supply of cheap crops into the food-processing factories dotted along the inland edge of New Costa, to be transformed into packaged convenience portions and distributed first to the megacity’s inhabitants, then out to the other planets, of which Earth was the greatest market.
After snaking down through the Northumberland Hills, Howell Avenue opened out into Santa Hydra, a broad flat expanse which led all the way across to the coastline fifteen miles away. He could see the Port Klye nest in the distance, eleven big concrete fission reactor domes perched along the shore. The ground around them was a flat bed of asphalt squares, where nothing grew and nothing moved, a mile-wide security moat separating them from the megacity which they helped to energize. Pure white steam trickled out of their turbine building chimneys, glowing rose-gold in the evening light. He couldn’t help the suspicious stare he gave the plumes, even though he knew they weren’t radioactive. The coolant system intake and outlet pipes were miles out to sea, as well, reducing any direct contamination risk. But the power plants were all part of his general malaise.
Slim pylons carried superconductor cables back into the megacity, following the routes of the major roads before they branched off and split into localized grids. Other, larger pylons carried the cables along the shoreline to the foundries. It was the heaviest industries which had colonized the land above the ocean, the big dirty steel mills and petrochemical refineries that used the seawater for coolant and the seabed as a wastedump.
Howell Avenue turned to run parallel with a heavy-duty eight-line rail track. These were the lines which connected the big industry districts to the CST planetary station, New Costa Junction, a hundred miles north and two hundred miles inland. Mile-long cargo trains ran along it all day and night, hauled by DVA5s, massive nuclear-powered tractor units. The leviathans roamed all over the planet, some of them on three-week journeys from the other continents, winding their way through a huge number of different terrains before crossing the final isthmus bridge on Sineba’s north-eastern corner, which connected it to the rest of the world’s landmasses. Their trucks carried every kind of raw material available in the planet’s crust, collecting them from the hundreds of crater-sized open mines which AEC had opened up across the world. In terms of bulk shifted, only the oil pipelines could rival them, bringing in crude from the dozens of major oil fields AEC operated.
The Ford Summer accelerated through a wide concrete underpass as a freight train thundered overhead, heading out from the coast. It was taking refined metal away from the mills, one of a hundred that day alone. In a few hours it would reach the planetary station and transfer the metal to a world whose clear-air laws wouldn’t permit the kind of cheap smelting methods Augusta employed.
With that depressing thought at the forefront of his mind, Mark finally turned into his own street. Putney Road was a mile long, with innumerable cul-de-sacs leading off it. The sidewalks were cracked, and the road surface uneven, long trickles of dark water leaked across it in several places where the irrigation pipes had fractured. Eucalyptus trees had been planted along both sides of the asphalt when the district was laid down, two hundred years ago. They were now so big their branches tangled together high above the centre of the road, creating a welcoming shaded greenway, and providing a great deal of privacy for the houses. A lot of bunting was hanging from the branches, the little flags all with the silver and blue Augusta football team emblem sparkling in the centre. As Mark turned the Summer into his own drive, the tyres scattered the usual layer of red-brown bark scabs which had peeled from the trunks to gather in the gutters. His father’s car was parked up ahead of him, an opentop 2330 vintage Caddy which Marty Vernon maintained in perfect condition. Beside it, the twelve-year-old Ford Summer looked rundown and cheap.
Mark stayed in the front seat for a moment, taking stock. He wanted all his agitation to fade away so he could enjoy the evening. I deserve a decent break. Around twenty years. There were noises coming from the back of the house as the kids played on their little scrap of yard. The eucalyptus trees rustled in the gentle El Iopi wind, sending shadows wavering across the roof. Mark studied his home critically: pale lavender walls of drycoral, with a curving lime-green roof, arched windows of silvered glass, and matt-black air conditioning fins under the guttering with their front edges glowing a dull orange. Gold and scarlet climbing roses, heavily dusted with mildew, had covered the whole south wall up to the eaves, and needed a good pruning; while a blue and white kathariz vine had attached its suckers to the gable end above the two-door garage – it also demanded attention. The monthly rental for this took up fifteen per cent of his salary. With the utility bill, car payments, his R&R pension, the kids’ education trust, the germline modification mortgage, health insurance, the vacation fund, clothing, food, and other regular debit payments, there was precious little left over for enjoying himself. Not that there were many places on Augusta where you could genuinely do that. Suddenly, he didn’t want to get out of the car, he would throw a damper over the whole evening.
‘Bad day
at the office?’
Mark looked up to see Liz smiling at him through the open window. He grinned ruefully back at his beautiful wife – another of his daily worries was that she wouldn’t be there for him when he got home.
‘Is that what it looks like?’
She reached in and touched his hand. ‘I’ve seen happier-looking suicide cases.’
‘Sorry I’m late, work screwed up.’ He realized she was almost never late home from work. Was that due to experience? He hated reminding himself of her sophistication, the kind that could only be acquired over decades, the years he hadn’t lived yet.
‘Come on,’ she said, and opened the Summer’s door. ‘You need a drink. And Marty’s here.’
‘Yeah, I see that.’ He gestured at the Caddy.
She frowned in concern as he climbed out of the car. ‘You all right, baby?’
‘I think the interface at the office is giving me a headache again. That or the whole goddamn OCtattoo is crashing.’
‘Mark, you have to complain. You can’t come home every day with a headache that gives you cold sweats. If the system’s wrong, they have to repair it.’
‘Okay. Right. I’ll talk to the supervisor.’ She didn’t understand how it was at work right now. If he kicked up a fuss he’d probably wind up getting shitlisted. Don’t be so damn paranoid, he told himself. But it was hard.
His father was on the patio decking which ran along the side of the pool, sitting on a sunlounger. Marty Vernon was a hundred and eighty, and eight months out of his latest rejuvenation. Physically, he looked like Mark’s younger brother. Not yet old enough to develop the thick neck and creased cheeks which were the Vernon family trait.