All Fall Down (18 page)

           
Win nodded to himself. He and the pilot sat inside separate cockpit structures, his behind and placed above the pilot's. If Win peered forward, he could just see the pilot’s helmet. “Does anyone ever visit? Can you get in?”

           
“Some of us used to, in remembrance. But the underground structure’s dangerous and the desert floor’s unstable. We're not allowed any more. And it’s pretty spooky.”

           
“Spooky?”

           
“The sound the wind makes when it goes through the open holes in the desert floor. We say it's the sound of their souls crying.” Win waited while the pilot paused, “I’m just glad my folks died immediately.”

           
“Pilot, would it be OK to fly over the site on the way back to the Colony?”

           
“Yes, Sir, of course.”

           
“You don’t have to call me ‘Sir’, you know. My name is Win.”

           
“Sir, yes, Sir.”

           
Win closed his eyes in his cockpit, “I am serious. I might be MI, but I’m really no more than a data analyst. That’s all. Please just call me Win. What’s your name?”

           
“Kiran.”

           
“Nice to meet you, Kiran.”

           
“Same to you, Sir. I mean Win.”

           
“Have you ever left the system, Kiran? Been beyond Fall?”

           
“Only the once. When I turned twenty, I was taken on a supply mission. Administrator Daoud himself gave permission. We went to the Spys system. Have you been?”

           
“Yes. Last time there was an asteroid due to impact on one of its occupied moons. I was in the Incident and Disaster Management Team for it.”

           
“That's when I was there! Well, not on the moon, but on the planet. Everyone was worried about meteorite storms or chunks of the moon being blown off.”

           
“Exactly. So me and my colleagues worked with the system’s authorities to deflect the asteroid.”

           
“That is so cool.” Win smiled in his cockpit. “Your job must be so interesting. Better than anything on this dustball.”

           
Win looked at his reflection in the cockpit window, “It can be. But it keeps me from my family. It’s some time since I saw them last. Tell me, have you communicated with anyone out of system in the past few days?”

           
“No Sir. Comms are monitored. I don't know anyone, anyway.”

           
“Do you think anyone would have?”

           
There was a pause. “I doubt it. Comms are on lockdown because of the vendetta, anyway.”

           
Win perked up at mention of Huriko's death, and the rumour. Before he could say anything, Kiran returned to his job. “We’re leaving Fall’s gravity well. Excuse me a moment, I need to concentrate on my calculations.”

The shuttle banked to one side. Win spent the time constructing the final holicons needed to program his probes. In front of him danced an array of animated icons, each nesting encrypted instructions. The icons sent out small hands to their neighbours. Win watched them dance along to a holo of his probes, where they filed inside, as if entering ancient rocket ships for a moon journey. He wished Djembe could be here to see how he’d programmed the probes; it would surely annoy his friend. He smiled. They would argue about the correct use of technology; an old argument which had often kept them sane during long missions in the past.

“Sir. Win, I've found an Ortema tube that will take us directly to the Lagrange One point. The tube’s gravity gradient may change occasionally, as the blue sun approaches eclipse line with Fall. Things might get a little disorienting at times.”

“Thank you. Can I ask a question? What did you think of your off-world trip? When you went to the Spys system?”

“Nervous, truth be told. I dock with the occasional supply ship out near the well. The wormhole I mean. But going into it! And to see another planet. Woo. It must be how the old timers felt. Back when we left the Terran system.”

“Terran system? I haven’t heard that for a long time. Most people say ‘Old Earth’ now.”

“We hear that on SysNet sometimes. I grew up with ‘Terran’, and that’s good enough for me. Don’t expect to be out in the wild lands much anyway.”

“You were telling me about going through the wormhole.”

“Oh, yeah. I hadn’t thought there’d be no light source inside them. I bet you could enter one and not even know it. 'Cept for the occasional flashes, I guess, energy potentials between the ship and well. Thought that was a bit disappointing, to be honest. But the system! Man.”

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“I never imagined planetary systems could look like that. Ours is all dust clouds. Sometimes you can see Fall Four when you fly out; I used to think it was so beautiful. But it’s just a standard gas giant, right? And our inner planets, they’re just lumps of rock. Planetoids really. Spys, though.”

Win leaned forward, and thought he could make out Kiran shaking his head in the cockpit below. They talked about the system for a while; its red sun, the disc of blue gas caught around the system, the different coloured planets, forested moons of the gas giants, the Habitat network that described an arc fifty thousand kilometres long and growing, the two wormholes that hung permanently open, connected by the blue gas, as if it was an electric spark between enormous planet-sized electrodes. Eventually talk turned back to Fall and the reason, as far as Kiran was aware, for Win’s presence on the planet.

“So, these probes we’re going to leave. What are they for? To track the assassin?”

“You believe Doctor Maki's death was a vendetta.”

“I know they said exposure. But really. And any pilot in the hangar would've gone to collect her. I would have, if I hadn't been helping in Research. It may only be a rumour, but...”

“But you are right, we have to check. If it is, there will be an ion trail in the system. My probes will find it, if it’s there.”

“You’ll be lucky finding an ion trail now. The suns give out real spiky
em
-signals.”

“The dust cloud will contain a signature of everything passing through it. My probes are sophisticated, they’ll detect it if it’s there.”

“Why would anyone kill a scientist in this day and age? And anyway, we’re classified, which is a good thing, if you ask me. Keeps tourists away. But doesn’t that make us difficult to find?”

“Vendettas are strange things. They still exist in parts of my culture, in the Qin. They are done for honour. They’re rare, thankfully. But you’d be amazed.”

Their shuttle craft banked as it followed the Ortema tube's low gravity gradient. The electric blue glow of the planet was far behind them, and now the great dust clouds were apparent as a smudge. Where there were rents, the stars shone through.

The shuttle shook as it passed between bumps in the gravity gradients. “Good job my colleague isn't here. He hates turbulence.”

“Sorry, Sir. Shouldn't be that violent. The eclipse effects must be stronger than we're expecting.”

They passed through space in silence for some minutes while Kiran made course adjustments. Eventually his attention returned, “Will you tell me more about the Qin? The only Qin who live here have been part of the Common Quarters for the last three hundred years.”

“We come from a place on Old Earth called China. When Old Earthers discovered the system's wormhole and developed usable spaceships, millions of us fled the environmental catastrophe on the planet. Like everyone else, the Chinese found planets very like Old Earth, and settled. We closed our borders and became Qin Space. You had to be three quarters Qin to join. Eventually we closed our borders even to Old Earth Qin, who were considered impure.
 
And we let no one out. We made great leaps in technology, especially in space flight, terra-forming, sustainable food production and quantum computing. We created a society based on a political theory called Communism. There was no economic basis to it, no money. Everything was produced and distributed equally by the Qin government.”

“Like the AIs do now?”

“Similar. But it was prone to corruption. Billions of Qin meant there were billions of opportunities for greed. Especially when there were droughts, outbreaks of disease and so on. We looked out at the Common Quarters, as they were then called, at the rest of humanity, and saw their economic capitalism drive them to war, piracy, environmental destruction, and we prided ourselves on not being like them. Not being caught up in the Corporate Wars. But it was political hubris. Do you know that word, ‘hubris’?”

“No.”

“It means excessive pride in a belief or ability, which leads to disaster.”

“So why was it hubris? We were at war, you weren’t.”

“Because so many of our people were put to work running the massive bureaucracy needed to ensure everything was fair and that there was no corruption, that we didn’t have enough people to do the work to grow the food or distribute it. The Qin society started to collapse. But because of our hubris the stories of famine on one world being caused by food caught up in paperwork on another, were all hushed up. It was embarrassing to the leaders.”

“But that sounds so stupid. If you had enough food, why not just send it where it was needed?”

“When political systems mature they become like living beings. They exist to feed themselves and serve themselves. That’s when many Qin started to leave Qin Space, to the Common Quarters, smuggling Qin technology with them. It was the start of the period we call the Flight of Qin, which lasted over two centuries.”

“What happened then, after the Flight of Qin?”

“When it started, there were wars all over the Common Quarters. System wars, trade wars, race wars, resource wars. Now they are called simply the Corporate Wars. They were threatening to become one war which would engulf both Qin space and the Common Quarters. There were pirates everywhere. MI was struggling to maintain what little order was left. And there were non-humans everywhere: clones; cyborgs; modified humans; robots with human brains in them. The Qin were about to collapse. The Common Quarters were about to collapse. It was a perilous time.

“And against this backdrop a group of Qin refugees and Common Quarters scientists made a bold step. They took Qin technology, stole it actually, fused it with theirs, and made the first modern artificial intelligence. The AIs took over resource control. Qin Space opened its borders, my ancestors became ambassadors. And we are still ambassadors to some extent. I work for MI responding to situations like this. My parents are politicians. My wife is a writer. She writes about culture and how it changes, how it stays the same.”

Win sat back in his cockpit seat. It was like talking to Hong-xian, telling fairy stories of ancient times, of good versus evil.
 
He felt home sick.

Kiran brought his attention back, “So, the AIs just took over, just like that?”

“Ah, no, great change is never that easy. Many people died to bring the technology out of Qin Space. And when they birthed the first one, they educated it over three standard years, nurtured its identity, its intelligence. And then they made either the greatest or stupidest decision in history, depending on your viewpoint at the time. They hooked it into their system-wide communications and economic systems. Many people died trying to attack it. The first thing it did was to take over the capitalist stock exchange, and then all the robots and cyborgs which it used as defensive troops. And within a year there was a revolution. Not against the AI, but in its favour. People realised they were better off. Food was free and distributed without human intervention. Resources for land and housing were made, under armed guard at first, by the AI-controlled automatons. Eventually the robots were re-distributed for cleaning and teaching. News spread beyond the system. Other AIs were built. MI took over, first protecting the supply routes for their distribution, then their design and education. Within ten years AIs were installed almost everywhere. My people started to flood into the Common Quarters. Afterwards, cyborgs and modified humans were banned under the Organic Edict, so that no rogue AI could ever control one of us again, even though the first AI had used them benignly. Robots were re-designed, too. The Qin started mixing again with everyone else. Two great cultures disappeared within a century, to be replaced with what we have now. There is still Qin Space, I know, but it’s something you drift into gradually, and there are many non-Qin there now. Many people resisted the changes in those first few decades. But I’m waffling now, you asked me about my culture, didn’t you?”