Authors: Tom Parkinson

Blighted Star (39 page)

BOOK: Blighted Star

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Even
so, the vote to press on with the colonisation had been a tricky one. A sizable
minority were still threatening not to even get off the ship on this world
which had already taken so much life. Odd to think that they were involved in
one of the great disasters of the diaspora movement,one which would be talked
about for centuries yet to come. She was lucky that she had not had anyone
close to her in the first wave. Many people behind her in the body of the ship
were coming out to join family and friends who had been in the first wave.
Though they had known the fate of those people for well over a year now, it was
hard to comprehend that the first wave had been wiped out so completely that
only two human beings were alive to greet them; one of the pilots and her
newborn son

Unfortunately
what was making the life of people like her who wanted to stay difficult was
the total lack of faith most of the colonists now had in the Agency. The Agency
had blown it, big time, by its secret programme of emplacing artificial staff
on new worlds. On balance, Janice was inclined to believe them when they
claimed it was for benevolent reasons, but she was not so certain of that as to
be able to argue persuasively against the many people who found the whole
episode distasteful at best and dangerously undemocratic at worse. Given
mankind’s troubled history, it was little wonder that conspiracies tended to
bring out a paranoid response when they were discovered. The response this time
threatened to disrupt the whole movement. Though only, she supposed, for a
short time.

On
Huygens there had been something of a witch hunt as the colonists demanded to
know who the android amongst them was. The whole thing had left a very bitter
taste in her mouth, but it had really been an expression of the helplessness
and impotence they had all felt when the news had come through about what had
happened to the Cassini group. The mob needed to do something, to react to the
danger and the pain of so much loss. When the tearful agricultural expert had
been identified, the poor woman’s reaction of shock and disbelief had been so
obviously genuine that the rage of the committee which had convened itself to
search her out was softened and the matter had been dealt with by putting her
in the brig rather than in an open airlock as many of the colonists would have
liked. Janice had even been to see her though they had never been close before
the scanners had revealed her true identity. She wasn’t being in any way maltreated,
but when the time came she would be sent back to join the thousands of other
artificials in the detention camps across the galaxy.

Cassini’s
Artificial was going to pose an interesting question or two. She had taken
refuge in the main computer of the first colony ship from where she could wield
a great deal of power. Steps had been taken to shield the computer in Huygens
from her but no one really knew if the hastily erected firewall would keep her
out. Or even if, in the many days for which she was in unrestricted
communication with Huygen’s mainframe she might have already subverted the
computer. For all Janice knew, she might be steering the colony ship straight
into the ground right now, though that would be pretty counter to the constant
reassurances the artificials were giving of being the friends of mankind. In
the end they would just have to take on trust that Athena Johnson wasn’t going
to kill them all, and that, if they asked her nicely, she would come out of the
machine and put herself in secure data storage. Fat chance of that, Janice
couldn’t help but think. If she’d been in Athena’s shoes, she would have
politely declined such an offer.

That
was all waiting for them when they got down on the planet, and personally,
Janice felt that the best thing they could do over the whole artificial
situation, not just here but everywhere, was just to calm the fuck down. By all
accounts, artificials had been around for at least a hundred years and they
hadn’t taken over yet. In fact, they had, here and there, done some good. The
danger was that once again humanity was likely to create an enemy where there
hadn’t been one before. Push the artificials hard enough and they might be
forced to push back just to save themselves. Unless they were a damn sight more
altruistic than humans ever could be. The Amish on board must be quietly
laughing their socks off to see mainstream society at such odds with its own
technology. Or at least they would be laughing if they hadn’t lost so many of
their kinsfolk in the first settlement.

The
new plan was very much to take each day as it came. They would to begin with
life on the two ships while extensive cleansing of the whole planet took place.
Interstellar trade would be put on hold for the time being, not that they had
anything to trade with the loss of the olerite mines. Huygens was supposed to
have loaded up on sheets of processed metals and to have set off back to
settled space, but none of that would now happen. This was okay with Janice who
had always planned on staying, but it was a bitter blow to Teresa who had a
life to get back to. Obviously, follow up waves were on the way but the next
one wouldn’t land for nearly a year, and it would be almost empty. When
Saunder’s World had been unveiled as the number one colonial destination, the
demand for places had been overwhelming, but now, with the disaster of
“Saunder’s Rot”, the planet had acquired an evil reputation.

They
were gliding down nicely now, through a patch of drizzle which streamed off the
screen before her to be replaced by a blast of white sunlight from the left
which glowed in Teresa’s red hair, showing the halo of strands which had
wandered free from the severe bun hairstyle she affected. On the horizon ahead
a flash of silver showed where the first ship waited for them and the two
pilots could not help but exchange a glance at the sight. The landscape they
were travelling over at such speed was flat and dull green, torn by strips and
puncture wounds of motionless water which reflected the sky for a moment as
they flew past only to become dark and unfathomable again as the light left
them. Over on the left she could just make out a half moon of water near which
the grey smudge of an abandoned town sat on a track which led towards the
sunset. As they dropped lower, a perfectly circular lake nearly filled the bowl
a plasma blast had cut into the rock. To the North, she knew, an even bigger
round lake marked where the colony had had its first plasma explosion. She
wondered how many more scars the planet would bear in a hundred years to show
the presence of man.