Debatable Space (36 page)

Those were the days… !

And it was during this period that we launched the second wave of space colonists. I was forced to say goodbye to my beloved
son, who had been (once again) accused of rape. I had to falsify his records to get him aboard, to expunge all evidence of
his assorted crimes, but I did it with a clear conscience. He was less dangerous in space, I argued to myself, than back here
on Earth.

And when he had left, I became acutely aware that my life’s work had to be finding a way to secure the future of those colonists
who had risked so much for an uncertain step forward for mankind.

A few years later, the first wave of colonists achieved landfall, on Hope. The very first Quantum Beacon was built. And Heimdall
started to come into being. I was ready for the challenges thrown at me. I was the right person, at the right time, in the
right job.

I had a simple philosophy of power, which I called the Pournelle Doctrine, after one of my favourite writers. The doctrine
is this:
Problems have solutions
. Mass starvation in Africa is caused by lack of resources, lack of water, corruption and war. So I helped turn the African
nations into self-contained energy-generating commercial entities with fertile fields and vast underground industrial estates.
Dictators were punished with loss of trading rights. Greed triumphed; and thus, wars started to vanish. Financial corruption
was replaced by dependency on the joys and exhilaration of a twenty-third-century lifestyle.

I created a complex system of virtuous circles where non-malign behaviour was rewarded with greater health, wealth, and longer
life. Poverty was eliminated by endless energy resources. The population explosion was – as Pournelle himself prophesied all
those years ago – a self-solving problem, because as wealth increases, family size decreases. Even the issue of land was becoming
less and less of an issue, as we sent colony ships of Palestinians and Eastern Europeans into the brave new lands of space.

I was, essentially, a passive-aggressive dictator. I controlled every aspect of the behaviour of everyone on Earth; but I
presented the façade of being the follower of humanity’s dreams. Like an old-fashioned wife from days gone by, I made all
the decisions, but let my sap of a husband believe that
he
was running things.

And yes, I admit I had my vanities. The name change was one. From Lena to Xabar. I dressed in tight-fitting shimmering plasto-leather
suits, I cultivated an image as a woman with a dangerous past. I played a role really – I reinvented myself as an ancient
warrior chieftainess in modern times. I was Boudicca, I was a cartoon heroine, I was
Xabar
. In a world dominated by grey and middle-aged politicians, I was the candle, and I was also the flame.

This was, of course, all calculated. I packaged my essence up into a series of connected myths and sold them all, all at the
same time. I sold the myth of the obedient servant of humanity; and I sold the myth of the sexy dominatrix. I sold the myth
of the ice maiden warrior princess who could kick male ass; and I sold the myth of the nurturing, gentle, mother/sister/lover.
I was alpha, beta, gamma and omega, all rolled into one. I was left-wing, right-wing, conservative, liberal, sluttish, puritanical,
dangerous, safe.

It was politics as prestidigitation, sizzle not steak. But there
was
a steak. There was substance to what I did. I wasn’t, as some argued, a bimbo apparatchik. I was a visionary. But a visionary
in a sexy suit, with a weird name, and a knack of being whatever people wanted her to be.

Then, after about twenty years, the look changed. I became more severe, more forbidding. As my policies became more liberal,
my look became more starched. I wore stiff suits and disapproved of nudity in television commercials. I became Nanny – fair,
firm, but innately puritanical and moralistic. That worked, too, for a good while.

Then I appointed a good-looking Vice President and for ten years or so, it was assumed that
he
was the power behind the throne. It was rumoured we were lovers, and that I was going to stand down in favour of him. I can’t,
for the life of me, remember his name. I can easily look it up, but I choose not to. When my policies started to run into
difficulties, he became my fall guy. He left, I stayed. Life carried on.

Of course, each nation on Earth had its own ruler; and each country was sovereign, and powerful. My role in “Presiding” over
the Council of Humanity was simply to coordinate and liaise. But the reality was, leaders of nation states came and went.
They lost at elections, they were assassinated, they died of heart failure. But
I stayed
– constantly reinventing myself, and my role. And in this way, I became for a period almost all-powerful.

At first, I travelled constantly. But as time went by I relied heavily on my vidscreens in my office in Brussels (and, latterly,
in an annexe of the Houses of Parliament in London.) I was, of course, spending every night in the virtual reality of Hope,
inhabiting the bodies of Doppelganger Robots as a frontier was tamed, and a planet was terraformed. So when my days began,
my head was pounding with memories of sandstorms and appalling deaths and great heroism. But I developed a knack of effortlessness
that allowed me to glide through paperwork and answer phenomenal numbers of emails. I vidphoned a hundred messages a day and
buzzed them out in batches. It was rare for me to have actual conversations. I preferred people to pitch me proposals by email,
so I had time to simmer on them; and then I announced my decisions.

And so we savoured the twenty-third century, the period in which the human race changed for ever. Microchip brain implants
became standard and so virtually every human being had access to all the knowledge of all the ages. Bodies and faces could
be changed like suits, with the vagaries of fashion. The first genetically engineered humans appeared – the “gillpeople”,
who could breathe in oxygen through water, and who were eventually evolved into the Dolphs. There was a whole new generation
of 100 Plusers, wars were unheard of, the distant planets were being colonised. Boxing was outlawed. Prostitution was taxed
at a higher tax band. Children were maturing faster, learning faster; teenagers were force-fed knowledge, but in their twenties
the new generation of “twoers” experienced the sheer joy of a gap decade before entering the world of work.

The famines in Africa were a thing of the past. After the catastrophic climate disasters of the late twenty-second century,
the climate was now in a state of stable homeostasis, no longer oscillating between global warming and Ice Age. Music was,
frankly, shit; even by my standards. Popular and classical alike, music was well and truly
up
itself. But painting had entered a renaissance, and wall murals of staggering beauty by the world’s greatest artists covering
whole city blocks and skyscrapers could be found in every capital city.

And the problems of the human race were being solved.
They were being solved
. Problems have solutions; you just have to find them.

The pressure on me was, however, phenomenal, and my workload was crippling. And after nearly ninety years in power, I began
planning my retirement. But first, I ushered in my repeal of the penal laws – which meant the eradication of prison in favour
of electronic and behaviour-modifying torture as a punishment for offences. The “brain-frying” of armed robbers and murders
proved to be chillingly effective. Crime plummeted; and those who used to be career criminals lived their lives in a state
of semi-fear, haunted by memories of the excruciating pain generated by our cortex-searers and imagination-burners.

This, too, whatever later critics have said, was a solution to a problem: namely, how to stop criminals committing crime.
One solution is to incarcerate them at vast expense for long periods of wasted life. The other is to hurt and terrify them
so badly they are physically unable to sin again. Under my scheme anyone who committed a serious crime – murder, rape, kidnap,
paedophilia, grievous bodily harm, armed robbery, or malicious extortion – would experience brain-frying. And anyone who became
a repeat offender would be brain-fried daily, until either redemption or brain damage was achieved.

It was cruel; but it worked. And, coupled with advances in forensic and thought-exploration technology which made wrongful
convictions a thing of the past, it was
fair
.

This was my brave new world. Mock it if you like; but I lived a long long time in the old world. And my world is, trust me,
a billion times better.

It was a strange and wonderful period. But looking back, I wish I had found myself some friends. People who could stand up
to me, defy me, argue with me. Instead, I had legions of loyal acolytes. Eager beavers who were young and anxious to cling
to my coat-tails. None of them were over the age of forty; all of them secretly plotted to take my job.

But there was power enough for all of us. I hired one young man, Matt Evans, who called himself Mat X, after hearing his rap
lyric on an album I downloaded on to my earpiece. He had such energy, such wit, such coruscating irony. So I called him into
my office and quizzed him on what
he
would do to solve the problems of the world. He was an angry and passionate black man who spoke, angrily and passionately
of course, about the shit that is dealt to blacks and mixed-race communities in today’s fucked-up society.

So I made him Coordinator for Africa. His mission was to make Africa into the richest, coolest nation on Earth. He had the
resources, he had the staff. And he had no fucking idea how to run an office or do a job; even getting up in the morning was
a strain for him.

But he learned, fast. He was streetwise, smart, a great people person. He sat down with African dictators and he visited mass
graves created as a result of the frequent genocidal wars that were still taking place on a regular basis. He invoked the
spirit of Mandela, but he also brought a young new energy to things. Secretly, I controlled his every move; but I used his
charisma, his youth, his rap-artist credibility, to win hearts and minds. Billions of young blacks who hated authority idolised
Mat X. They listened to his words; they admired his style; and they marvelled that he released his official Manifesto for
African Redevelopment in the form of a ninety-minute rap single.

And as a result, we got Africa in shape. It became what it should always have been; a fertile land rich in ideas and culture,
in which cooperation between disparate tribes is ingrained in the heart of every native-born ’frican. We called it “the ’frican
way”; it was not quite a religion, not quite a philosophy, but it became a way of life for billions.

China was tougher. Eventually, I found a young woman who was abnormally empathetic; her ability to seemingly read minds and
predict behaviour allowed her to introduce democracy and reform Chinese social practices. She later became a Demi-Goddess,
revered by entire nations; and of course, by that point she was no longer returning my phone calls. Her name was Xan (you
see, she even copied her silly name from me). Ungrateful bitch! Sorry. Moving on . . .

Problems have solutions. It was my creed, my Machiavellian code. Yet the curious thing is: amnesia is the driving principle
of all human behaviour. When things are bad, everyone will yearn for them to get better. But when things are good, it’s all
taken for granted. And so entire generations grew up in my world assuming this was the natural order of things. Full employment,
barely any disease, long lives, few wars, a warm and emotionally invigorating architectural environment – big deal! The world
was still shit, and adults like me were arseholes and fossils to be mocked and despised.

So maybe there
is
one problem that lacks a solution. Maybe human beings are just Not That Nice. They are selfish, venal, they have no gratitude.
I did so much for the human race; but what has it ever done for me?

Why, for instance, do I find it so hard to make female friends? And why do the men who are my lovers betray and patronise
me? And why is it I keep having to fake orgasms? And how come no one ever laughs at my jokes?

What the hell is
wrong with me
?

Though I can’t deny I was wrong to do what I did.

But how can it be, in a life lived so long, with so many good deeds to my credit, after so many years of self-restraint and
self-denial and altruistic commitment, that a single trail of wrongdoing can be traced and tracked and used to destroy me?

I admit my sin: I bribed officials to cover up my son’s rape of a young woman. And later, despite other rape investigations,
I used my official position to quash any police allegations into his conduct. I pulled strings, and falsified records, and
eventually got my son sent out into space where, I hoped, his wicked streak would burn out.

And Congresswoman Cavendish, the scourge of liberals, made it her life’s work to find me out. She began with the assumption
that I
must
be guilty, of something. She didn’t care what. She was a religious fanatic, a bigot, a hater of people of colour, a Muslimophobe.
And for most of the last thirty years of my long tenure in power she attempted to destroy me with one fraudulent accusation
after another. I found myself wearying of her lies, her black propaganda. And I could not think of an adequate solution to
this, my own particular and painful problem. Her hatred of me was visceral, intense, and it kept her alive. Without the aid
of rejuvenation therapies, which she disapproved of, Cavendish reached the age of eighty-eight with her energies undimmed,
her hatred of me unslaked.

And finally, she found a smoking gun. She found out all about Peter and my continuing role in concealing his criminality.
The scandal broke, and I was disbarred from office.

I can remember vividly the moment when it all ended for me. It was a Thursday. Or a Wednesday? No matter. It was morning.
I’d just finished a cup of strong coffee. I opened up my emails, and found one that had the subject line:
You have been impeached
. I rose, stunned, from my desk and walked numbly out of my office… and Cavendish was there in the corridor to greet
me. With an army of officials. Gloating. Gloating!