To reap the harvest of perpetual peace . . .
—William Shakespeare, King Richard III
Klaxons sounded piercingly throughout the ship as black-uniformed crewmen and women hurried through the cramped metal corridors to this or that necessary duty. Despite the soft, gripping soles of the crew's footwear, needed in the reduced gravity aboard ship, their feet made a rumbling sound that passed through the air and hull. Not a few of the crew's pale faces looked mildly nauseous. Transition through the rift, jumping thousands of light years in an instant, affected some people like that. Others it seemed not to bother. Nor was there any predicting in advance; the only way to find out was to endure the transition.
A voice followed the klaxons, emanating from someone on the ship's bridge. "All hands, all hands, secure from transition. Rotating ship in five minutes. Sail Crew, stand by to deploy the sail for braking. Captain to the Admiral's quarters."
High-Admiral Martin Robinson, United Earth Peace Fleet, was one of those affected badly by the passage. He'd hoped it would not prove so and had his hopes dashed moments after the bridge had announced, "Transition in . . . "
Robinson's looks belied his age. Despite being two centuries old, his face remained unlined, his back unstooped, his blue-gray eyes clear and bright. His heart and lungs and all the other organs worked as if they inhabited a twenty-one year old body and were no older than that themselves. Even his hair was blond, without a trace of silver or gray, and his hairline unreceded.
Anti-Decay Accelerating Factor, or ADAF, drugs had been available, at least to Earth's elite, for centuries. As a Class One, the highest of Earth's six castes, the High Admiral was very elite indeed.
Yet neither the apparent age nor the real age had helped one whit to spare Robinson the misery of transition. One moment he had been fine, if a bit nervous. The next had seen his mind temporarily erased as his body disassembled and reassembled in an imperceptible instant. With the next he was on all fours on the deck of his cabin, projectile vomiting, moaning, and cursing.
It was in this position, vile smelling puke forming a puddle beneath him, washing over his hands in a flood and spreading to stain the knees of the black uniform trousers, that the captain of the Spirit of Peace found her admiral and the incoming system and fleet commander.
The captain of the ship, Marguerite Wallenstein, accompanied by two of the voiceless proles that handled janitorial services for the largely middle to upper-caste crew, hurried to kneel at the admiral's side and help him regain his chair. The proles set immediately to cleaning up the vomit on hands and knees while Wallenstein went to a nearby cabinet and took from it an amber bottle and two glasses. She poured herself and the admiral a drink.
Color was just returning to Robinson's drained face as he gratefully accepted the glass from Wallenstein.
"I was warned what to expect but nothing . . . ," the admiral began.
"Nothing prepares you for it," Wallenstein finished. "I know. It gets better – a bit, anyway – after you've done it a few times."
"How many times have you . . . ?"
"This is my fifth transition," Wallenstein said, "and hopefully my next to last."
Younger than the admiral by some fifty years, Wallenstein looked to be the same age. A leggy, slender and svelte Scandinavian, she was a Class II, ranking just below the Admiral in the hereditary order of United Earth. Like him, she received full benefit of all the ADAF therapy and might, with luck, live to see five hundred. Not precisely beautiful – nose a bit too large and eyes a bit too small, she still exuded much of the earthy sexuality the application of which had seen her through difficult times in her rise within the hierarchy of the UEPF, the United Earth Peace Fleet. What low shipboard gravity did for her breasts didn't hurt, either.
A competent officer, Wallenstein had ambitions. Chief among these was to be raised to Class One, followed by promotion to Admiral, even High Admiral, and then to take what she considered her rightful place among the ruling caste. It would be a rare honor and achievement. She also knew that without a powerful sponsor it would never come to pass.
The proles finished their odiferous task and, bowing deeply and respectfully to the captain and the admiral, made a quiet exit from the suite. Neither of the upper caste officers bothered to return the bows, even symbolically. They forgot about the proles as soon as they, and the smell of vomit, had left. Who knew or cared what proles thought, after all?
"You should have waited in freeze, Martin," Wallenstein said, reproachfully, once they were alone.
The admiral shrugged, already half recovered. "It seems to pass quickly. And I did want to experience the transition, once anyway. Speaking of freeze, though, what of our passengers?"
"No malfunctions, if that's what you mean," Wallenstein answered. "They'll stay in freeze until a few days before we assume orbit. We haven't the stores to feed and water them without recourse to Atlantis Base, anyway."
Robinson nodded his understanding and agreement. Moreover, it would be months before the ship would be able to take orbit around the target world. He had great respect for the position – or at least for the power – of the clergy of Earth, but really didn't want them for company for all that time. The representative of the Caliph of Rome, in particular, grew tiresome very quickly, despite the body she would share gleefully and for the asking.
And on that not entirely happy thought, Robinson considered inviting the captain, once again, to his bed.
It would be a long braking maneuver before the ship assumed orbit and, while he could, by right and tradition, bed any female of the crew he wished, he had found the captain's technique most agreeable, especially in low gravity. Wallenstein would make Peace's long descent to the planet something other than a trial.
Peace was one of thirty-three ships now in system. Four of these were of the same, Spirit, class. Another twenty-three were of one of the older but similar classes. The Spirits were slightly larger than the rest, but only slightly. They were ovoid, at just under two hundred meters across and three hundred long. Their silvery skin shone when the sun was just right. Only on closer inspection could one see that the apparently smooth surfaces were pocked with the marks of hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of strikes by astral debris.
Still, at a distance the ships – all twenty-seven that could be seen from below by the locals if the locals used powerful telescopes, as some did – seemed pristine, powerful and invulnerable.
Only one of the petty states that infested the surface of the planet below had made any effort to match the power of the majestic and apparently invulnerable fleet. Just how successful that attempt had been was a matter of considerable conjecture, both above and below.
All of the ships, newer and older, were said to be armed to the teeth. Those arms, specifically Peace's arms, had been used exactly twice since the once invulnerable fleet had been established. It was too risky to do so now, though. Having seen two of its cities destroyed by nuclear fire from the fleet, the state so victimized had moved Heaven and Earth to eliminate the fleet's invulnerability.
That state, the locals called it the "Federated States of Columbia," had made the effort in a spirit of revenge as much as survival. "Once burned; twice shy" was the common saying. Having seen two of its cities burned off the map toward the close of the great war that had convulsed the planet decades before, their equivalent saying had become, "Twice burned; a third time and we nuke you until you glow." The Fed bastards had actually had the effrontery to demonstrate that the threat was not idle, tracking, intercepting and destroying a robotic courier ship to prove their point. An armed and decidedly hostile standoff had ensued with more than a thousand (the exact number was deep-classified) of FSC nuclear tipped and hypervelocity missiles pointed into space, and a like number of Peace Fleet warheads aimed expressly at the FSC. Moreover, it was widely believed that the FSC maintained, in addition to its nuclear missiles, some hundreds of mobile railguns and charged particle beam weapons capable of reaching into space either to defend against incoming UEPF warheads or, if those weapons were as good as they might be, even reaching out to touch the ships of the fleet.
The Peace Fleet might have destroyed the FSC, damn the retaliation, then, except that at the same time the FSC had demonstrated the ability to deluge Atlantis Island, the Peace Fleet base on planet, with too much nuclear fire to intercept. Since the families of the crews were on that base . . .
Besides the twenty-seven ships locked in geosynchronous orbit, six more were held further back, one behind each of the planet's three moons – in order of size: Hecate, Eris and Bellona – and three more guarding the rift point. These six were of varying types but, while having some defense capability, were designed generally for the support of the "tooth" elements of the fleet. This was longstanding practice, not a reaction to the FSC's threat. Indeed, insofar as Earth itself was concerned, there had been no reaction to the threats. Earth no longer understood threats, it had been so long.
The blue-green planet turned slowly and majestically below, its day-side pastels interrupted only by concentrations of white clouds. The right quarter of the planet was plunged in night. Cities came into view as bright sparks and thick lines, especially along the planet's southern hemisphere.
Watching the scene on the wall-mounted view screen that hung in his sleeping cabin, High Admiral Robsinson shook his head in something between dismay and disgust. So many people, twelve times or more what we have on Old Earth. And so uncivilized. Before left home I was briefed that they were a potential threat, but only when you see the size of their cities, so much brighter than our own now, do you realize just how many of the barbarians there are, just how much potential for violence they have.
The picture on the sleeping cabin view screen was better than the one is his main cabin. For all that, it was still flawed. Multi-colored lines flickered across it from right to left. Sometimes they were wide, sometimes quite narrow. They are always an annoyance and they never went completely away.
It had been a long braking before Spirit of Peace assumed orbit over the new world. Give Wallenstein her due, she's as competent a skipper as she is a bedmate. She's brought her command in flawlessly. Now if she would only stop hinting that she wants me to back her for a rise in caste.
The Spirits – Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony and Spirit of Brotherhood – were the newest ships in the fleet, the most recent having been launched just over one hundred and twenty Earth years ago. The others were much older. One of the others, the UEPF Kofi Annan, was nearly four centuries old. Earth could not build another. Even the ancient Annan was beyond her ability to recreate.
And that was the problem. The new world, Terra Nova, could not build them or their like either, yet. Yet was the operative word. The day was soon coming when the natives could build starships. The day was coming when the natives could come up looking. Worse, the day was probably coming when they would.
And Earth couldn't resist them now, thought the still youthful High-Admiral of the fleet, watching the screen and lying in his extra wide bunk next to the peacefully snoring Wallenstein, not if they manage to get off-planet and out of the system. Barbarians.
Robinson looked over at the captain and considered giving it another go. Why not? Despite his centuries of age, the ADAF therapy had given him the vigor of a young man, along with the skill and grace of a much older one. Anti-agathics were one of the truly remarkable breakthroughs of Earth's medical science. It was no mean achievement and had contributed much to the peace, order and stability of Old Earth that its critically important leadership actually had the time now to truly run things. Indeed, no one given the full treatments had yet died of any natural cause. Perhaps, if Robinson lived to see his third or fourth century, further breakthroughs might extend his life indefinitely. On the other hand, it had been a century since the last DAF gene advance. At least, he could not think of another since. He wasn't actually sure that anyone was even trying. Very few of even the very few progeny of the elites seemed much interested in science anymore. They were fewer even than chose to serve in the United Earth Peace Fleet and those were few enough.
Hands clasped behind his head, High-Admiral Robinson turned his attention to the dull gray ceiling, thinking back on the Earth he had left so regretfully almost a dozen months before. Earth was such a paradise compared to the hellhole below, teeming with about twelve times more people than a world that size could indefinitely support. And most of those were poor, sometimes starving, and afflicted with more disease than one could find at home outside of a laboratory.
Earth was peaceful, as well, and had been for more than three centuries. The structure ensured peace, with the half million or so Class Ones supervising perhaps three million Class Twos, who in turn supervised twenty or so million Class Threes, the entirety lording it over the half billion proles of Classes Four through Six. The proles didn't really matter, of course. They were non-political now, living in peace, growing the food and obtaining what raw materials could not be gotten from recycling. They did the limited manufacturing still permitted and possible. They knew their place.
Barring a few malcontents like Wallenstein, everyone on Earth knew his or her place now. We're not so foolish anymore as to leave decisions to the ignorant or the ambitious. Especially do we keep the proles out of things. What would they have to offer, anyway?
Indeed, there was hardly any such thing as ambition anymore. One was born into a caste and stayed there. Only within the Peace Force was social mobility still seen as desirable, and even there it was highly constrained. The highly pneumatic Captain Wallenstein was unlikely ever to see Class One, for all the time she had spent in a long life servicing her betters.
Whatever the drawbacks of the system, and Robinson knew them better than most, at least it was generally peaceful.
The same could not be said for Terra Nova, which had become one huge slugfest, periods of peace intermittent, at best, between bouts of war, reprisal, massacre and genocide. Robinson shook his head with disgust.
There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Robinson commanded, rising and throwing on a robe, walking to the main cabin, and ordering the door to his sleeping chamber to close.
"Maintenance crew, Your Excellency," said the Class Three technician. "Got the replacement screen for your cabin. New stuff, Your Excellency, just brought up from Atlantis Base by shuttle. Be only a few minutes to install it."
"Be at it, then," Robinson ordered. Then, since the installation was likely to prove noisy and bothersome, he retired back to his sleeping cabin and the captain. On the way he happened to notice the box the view screen came packaged in. Kurosawa Vision Solutions, 101 Imperial Way, Kamakura, Yamato, Terra Nova. Fragile: take special care when moving, the carton said.
Kurosawa always took extra special care of the products it sold to the fleet.
Special care or not, too much of the fleet is operating that way now. Earth sends so little, and the ships are growing so old.
Indeed, of the twenty-seven ships in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, two of them were little more than husks with rotating skeleton crews aboard. The meat of the things had been cannibalized to keep up the rest of the fleet.
And how many more will I have to order cannibalized to keep the fleet going? Robinson wondered, as he lay back down on his bunk. And how much can we continue to buy from below without arousing suspicions about our real status? Wouldn't those bastards in the FSC like to know they could nuke half my fleet now with impunity?
Buying from the Terra Novans had its problems. For one thing, the fleet had little to offer in exchange. Food was impractical to export over interstellar distances despite the Rift which made personal travel in cryogenic suspension reasonable. Besides, the Novans who could pay for food didn't need to. Indeed, the fleet purchased all its food locally along with the petrochemical fuel for the shuttles. This was explained to the Novans as simple economics; cheaper to buy locally than to import. This wouldn't have hurt Robinson so deeply if it had been the only reason. The fact was that Earth could not send food or petrochemicals even if the Consensus wanted to.
There were only four worthwhile and practical things to trade to the Novans to keep the fleet running. Technology was one, but it was under ban by the Council and had been for centuries. Besides, what Earth had wasn't all that far ahead of what the Novans were capable of making for themselves now. Gold? Half the gold of Earth was already on Terra Nova; same for the silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium. There were plenty of proles to trade as slaves, but the Novans, most of them, had little use for slaves. And the Moslems, and especially the Salafis, who did have use for slaves, only wanted pretty young girls and boys. Since there was a strong market for those on Earth as well, saleable slaves were a tight commodity. Moreover, you never really could tell what the proles knew. If they were questioned, and the Novans realized what Earth had become, it could be a disaster for the Fleet as well as the Earth.
Art, Robinson sighed. I am reduced to selling Earth's artistic patrimony to keep in being the fleet that keeps Earth from being overrun in a hundred years or less and looted of, among other things, its art.
Ah well, I should be grateful I was able to talk the Caliph into turning over to me so much of the contents of the Vatican's cellars. Fortunate, too, that he valued them so little. Then again, with even the followers of Islam so few, and most of those barbarians in the reverted areas back home who could care less about the Caliph, I suppose he needed the credit as well.
Robinson closed his eyes and dozed fitfully. He was awakened, sometime later, by the same technician who had come to install the new view screen. "We're done, Your Excellency. Also, your aide, Baron Fiske, said to tell you the shuttle is ready to take you to Atlantis Base whenever you're ready."
The shuttle itself was the same silvery color as the Peace Fleet ships. As the shuttle door split, it also split the blue and white symbol of United Earth. This was a map of the Earth, from the northern hemisphere with the southern hemisphere distorted out of scale, on which had been superimposed marks for longitude and latitude, the whole being almost surrounded by a laurel wreath. There was symbolism is that, with the poor south exaggerated in apparent importance but the white and European north still in the commanding center.
The doors closed behind Robinson with a whoosh. He walked the few carpeted steps to his chair and buckled himself in. Even more than the ships, the shuttles needed replacing. Roughly a third were unfit for flight for lack of parts. Moreover, though the skins were the best product of Earth at the height of its technological achievements, the composite of which they were constructed was no longer produced. Terra Nova, specifically the FSC, produced something similar (in fact, the nose cones of the missiles it had aimed at the Peace Fleet were made of it), but that was unacceptable for any number of reasons.
It was becoming a logistic burden as well. The shuttles that were still working had to be used overtime. This cut into their maintenance and led to even more failures. Moreover, though logistic effort had been saved with the skeletonization of the crews of the two cannibalized ships, and more by reducing the crews of others by a variable percentage, this put in danger the entire fleet.
And I haven't a clue as to what to do about it, Robinson fumed. One problem's solution just creates another problem. If I'd known then what I know now, I doubt I'd ever have accepted this assignment.
Instead of worrying about it, uselessly, the High Admiral stretched out in his chair and slept. He dreamt of the skiing, which he missed, north of the town of Atlanta, by the huge and growing Dahlonega Glacier.
It was going to be one of those cocktail receptions, Robinson decided.
"The FSC has become a rogue state," insisted the slender, well coiffed blonde. This was the intense – and, so Robinson thought, even more intensely vapid – Commissioner for Culture from the Tauran Union, one of the new supra-nationals coming to prominence on the planet. The Commissioner was on Atlantis with special permission to bid for objets d'art for a consortium of TU museums. "Unni Wiglan," she had introduced herself as.
Robinson considered her for what she was likely to be worth. As High Admiral he could have his pick of the Novan woman at the reception, of course. On the other hand, although he had a taste for blonde women (that hair color having become rather rare on Earth), she really seemed so earnestly dull that he wasn't quite sure that the no-doubt enjoyable use of her body could quite make up for the torment of having to listen to her talk afterwards. With mixed feelings, he decided, No, it really wouldn't be worth it.
Robinson simply asked, "And what do you think we can do about it?"
Which question ended that discussion, as well as short-circuiting any discussions in the immediate future that might have been of a more pleasant nature.
It was a good question, actually, the High Admiral later reflected in his ashore quarters. What can I do about it? Options? Hmmm.
A. I nuke the planet. It'll cost me the fleet and Atlantis Base – no big deal since I don't have a family here, and I could make sure I was safe and away before we struck – but at least I can still nuke them. Set them back . . . oh . . . maybe four or five hundred years. Then they come looking for Earth.
B. Get the Novans to nuke each other. Not hard but they'll probably nuke my fleet, too, on general principle. The FSC would, for a certainty; bastards can hold a grudge. So they nuke each other and us. Sets them back also four or five hundred years. Then they build a fleet and come looking for Earth.
C. Leave things alone. Within one hundred years my fleet is a worn out ruin. Within one hundred years the Novans are more than capable of launching their own ships. Then they come looking for Earth.
D. Change Earth. Not going to happen. Half the reason they sent me here, instead of leaving me home, was that I was even capable of thinking about changing Earth. History ended there and the Consensus doesn't want it to start up again. Besides, what would we do with half a billion educated, industrialized, militarized proles. Ugly thought, that is. And if the wretches started to actually think?
E. Change Terra Nova. But how . . .
The auction went well, a beneficiary of Terra Nova's cosmopolitan upper class' new found fetish for the luxuries of Old Earth. With what the serfs on Atlantis could grow, Robinson had enough to feed his fleet for another few decades, and even to buy – under the table – most or even all of the parts and fuel he needed. It put him into rather a good mood, actually, an especially good mood when he considered the portion, twenty percent of the auction's proceeds, that was his by right as the High Admiral of the fleet.
So good was Robinson's mood that he was even willing to listen to Unni Wiglan, the Commissioner for Culture from the Tauran Union.
"I was thinking about your question, High Admiral," the leggy blond said between sips of champagne. "I admit, I was a little shocked at it. I am, all we cosmopolitan progressives are, so used to thinking of Earth – its advanced social development, technology and culture – as being so superior to what we have that it sometimes comes as a surprise that you are not omnipotent."
Robinson shrugged. "Earth is very far down the road," he said, without mention of whether that road was the right one or not. From his point of view things were pretty good; worth upholding and defending, in any case. Would he have felt the same if he'd been born a prole, forced to eke out a living from the soil or burrow in its depths for ore or freeze on the fishing boats that dotted Earth's oceans? Would he still think so if, instead of his own potential five hundred or more year lifespan, he knew he would have been extraordinarily lucky to reach even an eighth of that? Would he think so if, instead of being able to bed lissome blondes like this one, he had to share his bed with some toothless prole crone? Somehow he doubted it.
"Yes," Unni agreed. "That's precisely it. Earth is far down the road that Terra Nova should be on, but isn't. The reason we aren't is the damned Federated States. By looting the world, by taking a totally unfair share of its resources, by exploiting the poor, the Federated States are able to make a more proper system, one like Earth has, seem inefficient. So, other nations here – doesn't that word make you ill, High Admiral? "Nations?" As if there could be any nation but the nation of Humanity – follow the FSC's lead. And we can't make any progress here on Terra Nova at all while the FSC stands in the way."
"I am not sure what I can do about it though, my dear Unni." Sure. Why not make the slight effort to remember the bimbo's name? Costs nothing and might pay, as long as she doesn't insist on talking afterwards.
"I can do something about it," interrupted a dark man who had slid up unnoticed.
Robinson looked over at the newcomer. Then he looked up . . . and up.
The man was tall, nearly two meters in height. In front was a long, untrimmed beard, half gone to gray, that hung to his waist. His head was covered with a checked cloth, held in place by a retaining band made of cylindrical beads interspersed with spherical ones of gold. Robinson thought the cylindrical beads might be of some precious stone, though he could not immediately identify it.
"I can do something about it," the dark man repeated. "I am Mustafa ibn Mohamed ibn Salah, min Sa'ana, Emir of the Ikhwan."
"Oh, Mustafa, piss off, won't you?" said Unni. "You've tried that trick with the FSC so many times and nothing has come of it."
"Silence, infidel houri," Mustafa commanded. "I lacked the means. The High Admiral can give me those means."
Wiglan stiffened under the insult. Robinson made a moue. He asked, "What "means?" And what is this Ikhwan of which you are . . . the leader?"
"The Ikhwan is the Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of true believers," Mustafa answered. "What we need are nuclear weapons. Give me a dozen such and I will break the FSC."
"That, I am afraid," Robinson answered, "will never happen. Our weapons are identifiable as ours. And, while we could – and did – use them on the FSC in past days, those days are long past."
"Then help me in other ways."
The trickiest part had been the sail. It had to resist tearing, or be self repairing, or be otherwise repairable, while also avoiding becoming overly charged, electrically. It had also to be very lightweight and highly reflective; the amount of propulsion provided by photons from the Sun and other sources striking the sail being very low except in the aggregate.
In the end, and after frightful expenditures, it was decided that self repairing was too hard. The nanites which did effect repairs on the sail were not, strictly speaking, a part of it. They worked though, even in the vacuum of space and even while under bombardment by the sun's unfiltered rays. The sail was quite porous, the diameter of the pores being less than the wavelength of the light which forced the sails forward.
The mechanism for setting the sail was simplicity itself. Instead of a complex mechanical operation to raise and lower it, a series of gastight tubes were sewn around the exterior and connected to the main ship by much thinner tubes. Gas was pumped into the tubes to set the sail, pumped out while thin filaments were retracted to furl it. Heating elements within the tubes kept the gas from freezing and collapsing in the cold of deep space.
Other problems, microminiaturized electronics and an extremely lightweight spacecraft body, had been easier. Indeed, they had been almost natural outflows of ongoing, purely terrestrially oriented, research. It was a short step from nanotube body armor for soldiers to a nanotube spacecraft body, for example. The programming had been even easier if not precisely simpler.
Not to say that the ship was cheap. It had eaten up almost all of the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration's somewhat constrained budget for the better part of two decades. The less said about the scandals, the overruns, the bribes from various foreign subcontractors, however, the better.
The ship, if one could call a robot a ship, was named the Cristobal Colon. Many had held out for a different, generally more culturally sensitive and less eurocentric, name. These ranged from Saint Brendan and Leif Eriksson (obvious nonstarters) to Sinbad to Cheng Ho. Since the Americans were footing the bill, however, they got to choose. Moreover, they were, at the time, going through one of their periodic bouts of extreme nationalism. "Cristobal Colon" seemed good to them and the rest of the world could lump it.
The robot, or ship, was just under two meters in diameter and approximately nine long. Various projections – a radio telescope here, an antenna there – were attached to the outside. The computer which controlled it was deep inside, or as deep inside as one can get with a cylinder two meters across. The sail dwarfed the robot ship though the sail massed very little and the ship several tons.
The ship was very fast, as men reckoned such things. Boosted by lasers fixed to the moon and floating in space, by the time the ship reached the point it was at it was going a very appreciable fraction of c. Everything was operating normally, though there was a bit of trouble in the Number Thirty-three vent. There were nearly a hundred such, however, which allowed Mission Control or the robot to steer the thing a bit. Even with one such operating at sub-optimal efficiency, there was no danger.
Imagine the consternation at Mission Control, then, when the robot and sail seemed to wink out of existence completely . . .