The Unincorporated War (14 page)

As he reviewed the constant stream of media information Hektor had an epiphany. Now, he decided, would be the ideal time to push something through that would normally have taken de cades to engineer. He wasn’t really sure it could pass, but even getting it introduced would significantly reduce the amount of time needed to make incorporation the perfect system. Finally the bar would be set limiting the unworthy to the basic jobs they were destined to perform while enabling the worthy to rule.

Hektor grinned with a lurid thought. Justin’s recently unleashed chaos was the perfect Political cover for his idea.

A bill has just been introduced to the Terran assembly. Called “The Shareholder Voting Act,” the bill stipulates that if a person does not own a majority of his stock he could lose his individual right to vote in a proxy fight. “Although it would add some complication to tallying votes on Election Day,” said Assemblywoman Audra Nilcont, “the software and expertise to accurately count all stocks of each individual to determine how their vote would be counted would not be difficult. We already have legacy programs in place that keep track of votes for myriad other issues, like minority shareholder job relocation and investor preferred minority’s sport choice. Adjusting those programs for suffrage should not be an issue.”

Assemblymen loyal to candidate Damsah opposed the bill and attempted to get it ejected from consideration on the grounds that so pivotal a motion would require a constitutional amendment. An opinion from the upper courts was sought and their ruling was that the recently added Fifth Amendment gives the assembly the authority to pass this as a law. This finding has caused great protest from the Damsah campaign and the presidential candidate has vowed, if elected, to repeal this law if it is passed or veto it if it is not.

—N.N.N. (Neuro News Now)

The paradox of progress is the paradox of birth: fresh life emerging from the threatening shadow of death.

—
Frank Kingdon,
Freedom: Its Meaning,
1940

T
he pride of the Belter moshav, Tarbut Gavriel, was actually as ugly a piece of Belter junk as ever plied the commerce. The ship, named AWS
Doxy,
was built along a central core with a pastiche of modules added on over the years with no apparent aesthetic consideration. No section was painted the same color, as that would have been seen as extraneous. The moshav’s attitude toward their ship was fairly typical, as most Belters were perversely proud of how much they didn’t care for appearances. More important was whether a ship was space worthy or not. The AWS
Doxy
was, impressively so at over 170 yards long, with two large powerful, if ungainly, boosters attached firmly to her rear. She had expanded out to section “M” by the time the moshavnicks realized she was probably big enough. She held a crew of a hundred and had been roundly derided as being just about the ugliest thing afloat for millions of miles around—yet another point of pride for her recalcitrant owners.

Had it not been for the third officer, assigned to the engine compartment to get some practical experience, the
Doxy
would probably have been sent straight to Mars for the President’s rescue mission. But at that officer’s suggestion, issued with a skill in letting the captain think it may have been his, the ship had first headed to Ceres for a refitting at the Gedretar shipyards. No matter what the crew may have thought, Third Officer J. D. Black was not going to let the people who’d taken her in nearly a year before charge into combat without at least a basic combat upgrade. And certainly not, she’d determined, after all they’d given her.

She’d been typical of those arriving in the belt, running toward and away from something, probably not knowing which. Had it not been for Fawa Sulnat Hamdi, a woman she nearly knocked over one day in a local market on Ceres, J.D. might still be wandering. She may have stayed on Ceres or perhaps even Sedna, about as far as one could go in the solar system and, as the space farers
would often say, “still get some decent sushi.” But the older woman had seen someone who needed help and had insisted on taking her in. And so what started out as a simple invitation for “good, strong Turkish coffee” ended up lasting a lot longer. It had been obvious to Fawa that J. D. Black did not know a thing about living in space and equally obvious that if someone didn’t come to her assistance she’d soon be hunted down for defaulting on her dividend payments. That initial Turkish coffee was soon followed by the bossy yet strangely comforting Fawa strapping the befuddled fugitive into the seat of a junker that J.D. would later recall being three bolts shy of a scrap heap. That ship had taken her to the
Doxy
and the
Doxy
had taken her to an orbital point designated Moshav Tarbut Gavriel.

J.D. had used the brief flight to the moshav to learn a little about where she was headed. She knew that the entire solar system had been divided into grids from the sun to the end of the Oort Cloud. She saw that the moshav had situated itself into one such grid. She’d always found the law in regard to ownership fascinating. If an individual wanted to own that grid and anything in it, all they had to do was occupy that space for one year and make any sort of personal “permanent” habitation. Of course “permanent” did not mean a space station or predesigned habitat. Often it meant a ship with burnt-out thrusters, but overwhelmingly it meant asteroids. Asteroids hollowed out, joined together, broken apart, burrowed into, and built upon. Often the larger a settlement got, the more asteroids would get collected, connected, and hollowed out. Most major settlements were, at a minimum, mile-long cylindrically shaped rocks filled with air, light, and water. When everything was in place they’d get spun for centrifugal gravity. The moshav J.D. had landed on was not particularly large, having a population of around ten thousand people, but, she saw, it did have an interesting history. It was one of the few truly religious places left in the solar system.

The Grand Collapse, a combination of the twin pillars of a virtual reality plague and a global economic meltdown, had resulted in a cataclysm the likes of which the world had never seen. But few places suffered from the nearly three-hundred-year-old event like the Middle East, cradle of mono the ism. By the time the plagues and nuclear fallout and winter had subsided, large smatterings of old-fashioned killing had taken their place. With the use of guns, bombs, and toward the end knifes and rocks, there’d been, at the end, precious few people left to kill. The death toll attributed to the Grand Collapse was three in four, or roughly 75 percent, worldwide, but in the Middle East it had been closer to nineteen out of twenty, or 95 percent. In those who were left, a distinctly anti-religious mind-set prevailed. Most of the survivors viewed religion as the cause of the catastrophe and either blamed God or simply stopped believing in a God who could allow such devastation. Had not Mecca and Jerusalem already been
obliterated by nuclear immolation, they probably would’ve been destroyed by those seeking revenge for their loss. Both cities, in an ironic twist, had ultimately become symbolic of the pitfalls of superstition and intolerance. The few religious sects left, including those of the Muslims, Jews, and Christians, might never have survived their neighbors’ ire had not the Alaskans come along and organized the world according to their own secular and capitalistic outlook. As the Alaskan precepts were the exact opposite of those of the Middle East, most survivors embraced them wholeheartedly, ignoring the smattering of a few religious “crazies” left. Also, the Alaskans had food.

Although the new Terran Confederation prevented the believers from being slaughtered outright, the few who did remain were in danger of being eradicated by the very safety and security that had saved them. In an amazingly short period of time hunger, suffering, discomfort, ignorance, and fear—for centuries pillars of religious struggle—practically vanished from the human race due to the power of incorporation that capitalism unleashed. Then, with the maturation of medical nanotechnology, near-eternal youth had truly become attainable. With all the signs of aging gone—thinning hair, weathered skin, aches and pains—what had for centuries been the psychological cues to start worrying about one’s imminent demise disappeared. With the advent of replaceable body parts, aging itself had come to an effective end, thereby delivering religion’s final blow—the eradication of death itself. There were still permanent deaths to be sure, but they were so rare an occurrence as to be negligible. No death meant no heaven or hell, no reincarnation. Why struggle with the meaning of life when life held out the possibility of lasting forever? It seemed with man’s apparent ascendance over nature God had gone out of fashion. This didn’t stop the few survivors from believing, but they were surrounded by a 99 percent of humanity that did not. The religious knew that if they stayed, their children and children’s children would never know God, any God, and so they left.

They were so poor that only by sharing could these religious remnants survive away from the deadly comfort and toleration that had become the Earth. So Jew, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu left in groups together and formed what they called “communities of belief” in the stars. Even though detractors called them “deluded” and predicted that they’d end up killing one another in space like they’d done on Earth, the fledgling communities had managed to persevere. And they’d done so because after thousands of years of bloodshed in the name of God these precious few had finally learned to honor their similarities rather than attack their differences.

It was in a well-apportioned cave within this community that J. D. Black had found herself. At first she’d been worried that she’d be forced to wear a veil, wig, or other type of “modesty” garb. But when she had inquired as to the dress
code, Fawa had simply laughed. Though some still chose to wear such garb, Fawa had explained, most did not. What J.D. had chosen to do, at least for the first few days, was sleep. She wasn’t sure why, but the sleep she’d had in that cave was the first without nightmares in a very long while.

After J.D. had recovered sufficiently to socialize, she began looking for work. Sadly, her skill set on Earth, more associated with that of the intellectual pursuits, hadn’t prepared her for life in space. Initially the moshav had let her work in the olive groves and pistachio fields, but it was soon obvious that she’d never make it as a farmer. It was while on rotation to the
Doxy
that she managed to find her second calling. She was good on starships. She instinctively knew where to put her feet and never had to be taught anything twice, no matter how complicated. J.D. had soon become a permanent member of the crew and with the ship’s short hops started to explore the other communities. A few were exclusively one religion, but most, like Gavriel or the largest, Alhambra, were of mixed faith. It was only slowly that J. D. Black began to realize that she was, if not happy, at least no longer unbearably sad. She wasn’t exactly sure when, but at some point she’d started to think that the concept of God might not be as arcane as she’d once thought. She’d even made up her mind to read one of those books Fawa was always offering, but that notion quickly faded when the events of the war overtook them all.

Given their centuries of peaceful coexistence and the constant reminder of what their internecine fighting had once wrought, the communities of belief were horrified by the prospect of war. Still, most had been willing to defend their home against what they felt to be corporate enslavers. It was decided that the
Doxy
would be outfitted and made ready. There had been no shortage of volunteers to serve on her tattered decks; they may have been believers, but they were Belters as well. J.D., however, wasn’t so sure about the war or its fledgling leader, and was still struggling with a decision when Fawa stopped by her room unexpectedly.

“Little one,” asked her friend, “am I disturbing you?”

“No,” replied J.D. “I was just …” J.D. scanned her Spartan surroundings. “I was just doing nothing.” She then invited her friend over to the one chair she owned. “Did you need something?”

Fawa came in and sat down. Her look, noted J.D., was all business.

“Can I ask something of you?” asked Fawa, beckoning J.D. to sit as well.

J.D. nodded as she took a spot cross-legged in front of her mentor. “Of course.”

“Will you sign up? I mean when the
Doxy
goes to war.”

“I was thinking of it, Auntie,” answered J.D., using the term of endearment common to the belt.

“That may be for the best,” answered Fawa, leaning forward onto her knees, “for I am worried.”

“What about, Auntie?”

Fawa frowned. “My youngest, Tawfik, volunteered and has, of course, been accepted. They’re going to post him to the engine room.”

J.D. smiled knowingly. If she chose to sign up, the engine room was going to be her posting as well.

“Auntie, don’t you think that he should be watching out for me? Remember, I’m the new one.”

Fawa shook her head. She was not interested in J.D.’s stab at humor. “He is so young, only forty-seven, and you know how impetuous boys can be. Besides, I think Allah has a destiny for you. Not by accident did we meet nearly a year ago. Maybe if you have a destiny, my boy can find refuge in its shadow.”

J.D. was unable to speak. She’d never liked having decisions made for her and yet here was Fawa attempting exactly that.

“Auntie Fawa,” J.D. finally answered, looking up into the forlorn eyes of her friend, “if there is such a being as Allah or God or what ever, I sincerely doubt that in all the vastness of the solar system he knows or cares about me.”