The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (72 page)

What might have been a smile passed across Sandy’s lips. “Yes,” she said bravely.

Liz rolled her eyes for Mark and got up. “I’ll leave you two to it, then. Come on, Barry, what do you want for tea?”

“Pizza?” he said immediately, followed by a hopeful, “and chips.”

“It’s not going to be pizza,” Liz told him sternly. “You know you’ve cleared all of them out of the freezer. It’s going to have to be fish.”

“Oww, Mum!”

“We can probably find some chips to go with them,” Liz said, knowing it was the only way to get him to eat the fish.

“All right,” the boy said glumly. “Well, is it fried fish, then?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Barry sat in his chair at the table, a picture of tragedy. Liz told the maidbot to fetch some fish from the freezer, adding an order silently through her e-butler to make it a grill-only packet.

“So why didn’t anything make sense?” Mark asked again.

“Well, it did sort of,” Barry said. “It’s just that I don’t see the point.”

“Of what?”

“School.”

“Ah, why not?”

“I don’t need it,” the boy said sincerely. He gestured to the broad kitchen window with its view back down the Ulon Valley. “I’m going to be a jetboat captain, and do the river.”

“Oh, right.” Last week it had been a gyroball instructor. Kids in the Randtown district tended to be influenced by the more sporting and physical aspects of life. They were all going to be raft masters, or jetboat captains, or ski instructors, or pro fliers, or gill divers. “Well, you still need a basic education, I’m afraid, even to qualify for that. So you’ll have to keep going, at least for a few years more.”

“Okay,” Barry said mournfully. “I might be a starship pilot, as well. I was watching that on the cybersphere today. The whole school was there when the
Second Chance
docked with its platform. That was so cool.”

Mark kept looking at Sandy as he was spooning her the soup. “Yeah, it was.”

“You saw it, too?”

“Certainly did.”

The maidbot arrived back with a packet of fish. Liz grabbed it from the little machine. “Come on, help me cook this.”

“Where are the chips?” Barry asked plaintively.

“There are some potatoes in the basket. We’ll cut them up. It won’t take long.”

“No no, Mum, real chips. From the freezer!”

Mark took Sandy through into the living room while Barry and Liz prepared the fish. He cleared some of the toys off the sofa and sat down. Sandy curled up in his lap, sniffling as she clung to her friend-doll, a pro-response polar bear that was sensing her illness, and held on to her arm affectionately.

He flicked through a few cybersphere reports on the big portal before reluctantly settling on Alessandra Baron, who had secured an exclusive with Nigel Sheldon himself. He was sitting behind some big desk in his corporate office, talking clearly and confidently, as if the whole starship return drama had been just a scheduled stop for one of his trains. “While I deeply regret that Captain Kime had to leave Emmanuelle and Dudley behind, I don’t believe he had any choice in the matter. I was not there, nor were any of the somewhat distasteful armchair critics I’ve heard today. As such we are completely unable to offer anything approaching a valid opinion concerning what was done, and what other courses of action were supposedly available. Only a fool would try to second-guess an event like that. I appointed Wilson as captain because I believed he was the right man for the job. His exemplary actions throughout the mission have completely vindicated that appointment.

“Of course, CSI has already authorized re-life procedures for both of our lost crew. Thanks to the safety procedures which we take so seriously, their onboard secure memory stores were updated just before they went over to the Watchtower.”

“But what about the information the
Second Chance
brought back?” Alessandra asked. “Surely you have to concede it’s disappointing?”

Nigel Sheldon smiled as if he pitied her. “We have more data than the entire Commonwealth physics community can absorb. I’d hardly call that a dearth.”

“I was referring to the lack of knowledge about the Dyson aliens. After so much money was spent, so much time devoted, and with the added cost of human life, don’t you think we should know more? We don’t even know what they look like.”

“We know that they shoot at us on sight. The one thing I am in agreement with my good friend Senator Burnelli over is that there must be a return mission. This is the nature of exploration, Alessandra, I’m sorry it’s not fast enough for your personal timetable. But sensible, rational humans venture somewhere new and see what the conditions are like so that we can prepare ourselves to go farther next time. The
Second Chance
did this, it brought back a wealth of details on Dyson Alpha and what kind of ship we need to go back there with.”

“So you’re in favor of going back, then?”

“Definitely. We’ve only just begun our encounter with the Dyson stars.”

“And what kind of ship should we use, based on what we learned from the first mission?”

“One that is very fast, and very strong. In fact, just to be safe, we should probably send more than one.”

Mark and Liz got the kids to bed and settled by eight o’clock. After that, they sat in the kitchen, eating their own supper of chicken Kiev: out of a packet and microwaved, of course. “Old Tony Matvig has some chickens,” Mark said. “I talked to him the other day, he’ll give us some eggs if we want our own.” His fork prodded at the meat on his plate, squeezing out some more of the garlic butter. “It would be nice to have something we know isn’t full of hormones and weird gene splices to feed the kids with.”

Liz gave him her “weighing up” look. “No, Mark. You know we’ve been through all this. I like living here, and I’ll like it a whole lot more once the house has finished growing, but I’m not buying in that deeply. We don’t need to keep chickens, we earn more than enough to eat well, and I don’t order factory food from the Big15. Everything in that freezer has the clean-feed label, if you ever bothered to look. And who did you see plucking and gutting these chickens, exactly? Were you going to do it?”

“I could do.”

“You won’t. The smell is revolting. It made me throw up.”

“When did you ever gut a chicken?”

“About fifty years ago. Back when I was young and idealistic.”

“And foolish. Yeah, I know.”

She leaned over and rubbed his cheek with her fingers. “Am I a real pain?”

“No.” He tried to catch one of her fingers in his teeth—missing.

“In any case,” she said, “chickens will ruin the lawn. Have you ever taken a good look at their claws? They’re evil.”

Mark grinned. “Killer chickens.”

“They kill lawns, and rip the rest of the garden apart as well.”

“Okay. No chickens.”

“But I’m all in favor of the vegetable garden.”

“Yeah. Because I’m going to rig up an irrigation system, and a gardeningbot can look after the rest of it.”

Liz blew him a kiss. “I said I’d tend the herb bed myself.”

“Wow. All of it?”

“Any regrets yet?”

“Not one.”

“I can think of one.”

“What?” he asked indignantly.

“I need a big strong man to go out and look at the precipitator leaves again.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding! I fixed them last week.”

“I know, darling. But they barely filled the tank last night.”

“Goddamn semiorganic crap. We should have dug a decent well.”

“Well, we can get a constructionbot to lay a pipe down to the river when the real house is finished.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

The maidbot took their plates and cutlery away to stack in the dishwasher. Mark carried a dish of sticky toffee pudding through into the living room, along with two spoons. They snuggled up together on the sofa, and started scooping at the gooey mass from opposite ends. Over on the portal, Wendy Bose was stammering and weeping her way through a statement. Professor Truten, labeled by the subtitles as a “close family friend,” had his arm supportively around her shoulder.

“Poor woman,” Liz said.

“Yeah.”

“She needs to go into rejuve. I wonder if CST will pay for that?”

“Why does she need rejuve?” Mark peered at her image inside the portal. “She doesn’t look like she’s that old.”

Liz took advantage of his distraction to spoon up two lots of pudding. “Compared to whom? Dudley Bose’s replacement clone is going to be an eighteen-year-old. She’ll have a physical equivalence of late fifties. Trust me, that’s not a marriage you want to try.”

“Suppose not. I just can’t stop thinking about Bose and Verbeke. Talk about being abandoned a long way from home. Do you think they suicided when they realized?”

“Depends on the Dyson aliens. Maybe they built them an environment chamber, and right now they’ve cracked the translation hurdle and are chatting away happily.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Liz chewed thoughtfully for a moment. Professor Truten was helping Wendy Bose back into her house. “Nope. They’re bodydead.”

“I figured that, too.” His gaze wandered up to the cheap composite ceiling. “You know Elan’s almost the closest Commonwealth planet to the Dyson Pair.”

“There are seven closer than us, including Anshun. But you’re right, we’re close.” She giggled. “Only seven hundred and fifty-four light-years away. Scary, huh?”

He reached around with his free hand, and poked her just below the ribs, where he knew she was sensitive.

“Ow!” Liz screwed her face up, and retaliated by scooping up a giant piece of pudding.

“Hey!” he protested. “I’ve barely had a mouthful yet.”

“Life’s a bitch, then you rejuvenate and do it all over again.”

SIXTEEN

It was midday on America’s eastern seaboard. The sun had reached its zenith, allowing it to shine directly onto the streets lurking at the bottom of Manhattan’s concrete canyons. Looking down on Fifth Avenue from the two hundred twenty-fifth floor of the Commonwealth Exploration and Development Office, Nigel Sheldon could see the city’s perpetual traffic battle in action. All along that massive historical thoroughfare, yellow cabs and matte-black limousines were jammed together, two entirely separate and antagonistic species contesting dominance of the available lanes. Urban myth told it that the city’s cabs had illicit aggressor software installed in their drive arrays. It wouldn’t surprise Nigel given the times his limo had to brake to make way for a cab veering out in front of him. And they were the ones who benefited most from this brief visitation of light, hundreds of them gleaming splendidly amid their somber opponents, right now they looked victorious.

Closer to the base of the skyscraper he could see a thick semicircle of reporters around the main entrance. There was an idle thought, if he spat out of the window, how long would it take before one of them was hit, looking upward with revulsion and annoyance. It was good to have childish thoughts like that still, he felt—put a perspective on life. His fellow Council members could certainly do with lightening up.

They were already filling the room behind him. Thompson Burnelli and Crispin Goldreich sitting together at the table, heads together as they horse-traded and maneuvered, playing out the game in which all the Grand Families participated. Elaine Doi, looking more drawn than usual, but then she really didn’t need complications in the year that would see her placing her name into the ring for the pre-primaries of the presidential election. She was exchanging greetings with Rafael Columbia and Gabrielle Else. There were fewer aides this time around, reflecting the increased security and importance resting on the ExoProtectorate Council. Wilson Kime was standing talking with Daniel Alster, looking remarkably unflustered given the certain degree of animosity directed toward him by Council members, led by Senator Burnelli.

Nigel could take the politicking in his stride. Unlike Wilson, he’d never given himself the luxury of a sabbatical life away from the heart of the Commonwealth government. Thinking ahead was what he lived for; and he was pretty sure that none of the aides and think-tanks that the other Council members drew on for their briefs had prepared as many scenarios as the CST strategists had. Some of the worst-case outcomes were going to require counteractions that he would have to undertake by himself, through private and discreet ventures—including the ultimate fallback of evacuating his entire family from Commonwealth space altogether. Implementing such schemes didn’t particularly bother him—in fact they were quite a challenge. The only cause for concern today was the one thing that had been troubling him for several months now, the lack of any communication from Ozzie. Nigel was used to his friend vanishing for months, or even years at a time while he went worldwalking, or even homesteading and raising a new family. But he always answered his messages eventually.

“If you’re ready,” Elaine Doi said, somewhat impatiently.

Nigel turned from the window, nodding reluctantly. He’d been putting off the meeting in the small hope that Ozzie would appear at the last second, unapologetic as always and happy to have caused a nuisance. It wasn’t to be. The doors were closed, and the room secured.

Everyone settled around the table. The Vice President asked for the SI to be brought on-line, and its tangerine and turquoise lines began to shiver across the screen at the end of the room. “I believe we should start by congratulating Captain Wilson and his crew on performing an exceptionally difficult mission with true professionalism,” Elaine Doi said. “I know you had some hard choices to make out there, Captain, and I don’t envy you that, but I believe they were the right ones. Bringing back information was your first priority.”

“What information was that, exactly?” Thompson Burnelli asked. “I consider myself less than enlightened by your trip. Certainly given the cost of the damn thing.”

“That there is a very large, technologically advanced, and apparently aggressive alien species seven hundred and fifty light-years from the Commonwealth,” Wilson said impassively. “They were confined within the barrier, but someone let them out so they could see us. A third party. In itself an action we should consider to be unfriendly at the very least, if not positively hostile.”

“You seriously believe that?” Thompson asked. “We’re facing two sets of aliens, both of them hostile?”

“The barrier removal was not coincidence,” Nigel said. “We didn’t do it. The Dyson aliens didn’t do it. QED, there is another factor at work here.”

“It had to be the aliens which put it up in the first place,” Brewster Kumar said. “Only the people with the knowledge of construction could do that.”

“That makes very little sense to me,” Elaine Doi said. “If you’re going to switch it off when the first ship arrives to investigate, why put it up in the first place?”

“I’d like to address that,” Wilson said. “We have two options, either the barrier was taken down by the same aliens who put it up, in which case the motivation remains beyond us given our current level of knowledge about them. Or it was switched off by someone else, again for an unknown reason; and that is the more worrying conclusion.”

“Why?” Crispin Goldreich asked.

“It was put up to confine what appears to be an aggressive species. Somebody was worried enough about them to build that thing. Now I was there, I saw that barrier; you just don’t build something like that without a very, very good reason. I don’t care how advanced the builders were, the resources and effort they needed to devote to that task were fantastic. They were worried to the point of paranoia about the Dyson aliens. Think about that: a species which can build a barrier around a star were worried. Anything that can worry them scares the shit out of me. And now the Dyson aliens are free.”

“Do you agree with that assessment?” Elaine Doi asked the SI.

“It is logical. We do not believe it was coincidence that the barrier was switched off at the same time as the
Second Chance
arrived. That it was done by the Dyson aliens seems unlikely. By simple elimination it had to be the creators of the barrier, or yet another alien.”

“Neither of which has any valid motive,” Brewster Kumar said.

“No apparent motive,” the SI said. “But as we do not yet know the actual reason behind the establishment of the barrier, guessing at the basis for its removal is an irrelevant exercise.”

“Don’t you think it was put up because the Dyson aliens are aggressive?” Wilson asked.

“It is a plausible theory, yes,” the SI said. “But why was it deemed necessary to enclose Dyson Beta in a similar barrier?”

“Good point,” Rafael Columbia acknowledged.

“I don’t know,” Wilson said wearily. “But what we have established is how dangerous the aliens at Dyson Alpha are.”

“Apparently dangerous,” Thompson Burnelli said. “Let’s face it, if an alien species had observed Earth in the twentieth century, especially during the Second World War, they would conclude we were irredeemably violent. I’m surprised they didn’t put a barrier around us while they had the chance, if that is the reason these things are built.”

“We’ve grown out of that phase,” Elaine Doi said. “Rejuvenation and interstellar expansion have completely altered our psychology and culture.”

“Don’t start that argument again,” Brewster Kumar said. “We got lucky, that was all.”

“We make our own luck,” Elaine said. “As a race we have great potential within us. Have some faith.”

“We’re not discussing us,” Nigel said. “We’re here to decide what to do about a bunch of aliens with an awful lot of nuclear weapons and a propensity to use them.”

“They have nukes and no doubt a great many other sophisticated weapons,” Rafael Columbia said. “But they do not have any form of FTL, which gives us a safety margin of seven hundred and fifty light-years. That’s a very big safety margin.”

“They didn’t have FTL, because there was no need for it inside the barrier, and FTL was blocked by the barrier,” Wilson said. “But given their demonstrated technological capability, I wouldn’t count on any kind of distance keeping them away from us.”

“How long would it take them to build FTL starships?”

Everyone looked at Nigel. He shrugged. “Like Wilson said, they have a high technology industrial base. Once you’ve worked out the basic theory, you could have a prototype hyperdrive up and running in a matter of months if you devote enough resources to the project. The key question is, if you can put that math together in the first place.”

“We have to assume they can.” Elaine Doi said. “They saw the
Second Chance
in operation.” She grimaced. “And they might well have Bose and Verbeke.”

“They’ll suicide before that happens, surely,” Rafael Columbia said. “They know what’s at stake.”

Wilson cleared his throat uncomfortably. Everybody around the table turned to look at him. They’d all been in the game long enough to recognize bad news from any distance.

“All crew members, myself included, were equipped with an insert which will perform that function,” Wilson said. “However, we can reasonably assume Bose and Verbeke will assess the situation first. If they were to make an initial nonviolent contact with the Dyson aliens, I would expect them to make some attempt to communicate and build up a rapport. Only if it looked hopeless would they resort to a complete datawipe of their memory inserts and suicide.”

“So they’ll do it then?” Elaine Doi said; she seemed to be urging him to say
yes
. “I mean, they know they’ll be re-lifed within the Commonwealth. They’ll only lose a day at the most, surely? And it could be a very unpleasant day, at that.”

“I am reasonably convinced Emmanuelle Verbeke will do the right thing,” Wilson said. “But—and I hope to Christ I’m wrong—we may have a problem with Bose.”

“What do you mean,
a problem
?” Thompson Burnelli demanded.

Wilson stared at the Senator. “His training and assessment weren’t as thorough as everyone else on board. After selection, he spent some time in a rejuve tank reducing his body age. The remaining time was limited before we launched.”

“Then why the fuck did you let him on board?”

“Political expediency,” Nigel interjected smoothly. “Same reason your man Tunde Sutton was on board.”

Thompson leveled a rigid forefinger at Nigel. “Tunde passed every test you threw at him.”

“He certainly did. And if he’d been rejected at the final selection process, along with everyone else who had connections to Earth’s Grand Families, you would have been the first to cause a stink.”

“Maybe. But at least Tunde was properly trained, not like this Bose character. What kind of half-assed operation are you running here?”

“The only one in town.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Thompson sat back, and gave both Nigel and Wilson a disgusted look.

“Very well,” Elaine Doi said. “In the worst-possible case, the Dyson aliens know a lot about us, they can build an FTL starship, and they know where we are. What do we do about that?”

“Same as the last time,” Wilson said. “Send a mission to find out what’s going on.”

“One that has a greater success than last time, one sincerely hopes,” Crispin Goldreich said.

“It will be,” Nigel said. “The
Second Chance
was a shot completely into the unknown. We had to build something that could tackle just about any contingency, a true exploratory vessel. This time the mission will be very tightly defined. These ships will be smaller, and possibly even a little cheaper.”

“Why do you need more than one?” Elaine Doi asked.

“So the others can monitor what happens to the one that attempts to make contact, and report back if it’s lost,” Wilson said. “By now the Dyson aliens know who we are, and possibly that we didn’t put up the barrier. They certainly know we are no threat to them. How they react to us this time around will be crucial.”

“I wouldn’t like that job,” Rafael Columbia muttered.

“I’m not looking forward to it myself,” Wilson said. “But it has to be done, and done properly.”

“You got something to prove?” Thompson Burnelli asked quietly.

Wilson didn’t rise to it.

“I take it these ships are on the drawing board?” Elaine Doi asked.

“Oh, yes,” Nigel said. “As soon as we completed the
Second Chance
design, I authorized preliminary assessment on a possible smaller exploration starship. Adapting that to a fast scout vehicle is relatively simple. From what we learned about building the hyperdrive for
Second Chance
we can modify future versions for a much greater speed. That whole life-support wheel structure has been dumped, the crew can slum it in freefall. We’ve also minimized the reaction drive along with its ancillary garbage; there was no need for it apart from short-range maneuvering. But we have bumped up the armament quotient. They’ll be able to fight as well as run.”

“And what will their mission be, exactly?” Brewster Kumar asked.

“They must discover more about the nature of the Dyson aliens. If they are truly warlike. If they are developing FTL starships or opening wormholes to nearby star systems. FTL in particular would be hard to hide, given a wormhole signature is so readily detectable. Of course, if they have any knowledge in that field, that will mean they can probably spot us coming as well.”

“Very well,” Elaine Doi said. “I don’t think any of us disagree that this new mission must be undertaken, and with some urgency. What I’d like from this Council is a formal proposal to the Commonwealth Executive Office to form a new agency which will oversee the whole Dyson exploration and contact operation from planning to execution, put it all under government jurisdiction.”

“And financing,” Thompson Burnelli said gruffly.

“Are you saying you want the government to establish a civil starflight agency?” Rafael Columbia asked.