Deucalion (22 page)

‘Yeah!' He sounded a note of irony. ‘We really handled
that
well.'

‘How are things on that front?'

The expression on his face answered my question before he spoke. ‘Even better. I've convinced Amanda Kostas to hold fire until tomorrow, then we trigger Stage Two. Both barrels!'

I blew a kiss at the vid-screen. ‘I can hardly wait.'

31

MORNING NEWS

Presidential Complex

New Geneva (City Central)

30/14/101 Standard

GASTON

Kennedy watched his boss beginning to relax. They had monitored every news broadcast the evening before, and nothing had come up to trouble them. In fact, the coverage of the Elokoi situation had shown him in a positive light. He was almost crowing with relief as the opening titles dissolved and the morning news began.

But then the mood changed.

Instead of the usual ‘talking head', the face that greeted them was Amanda Kostas herself, and her opening line stopped their breathing.

‘This edition of the Internet morning news will not follow our normal pattern. But I think, once you see the reason, you will understand why we have chosen to ignore, for the present, all other stories, including the aftermath of yesterday's momentous developments.

‘We have with us in the studio this morning, a man whose name many of you will remember for his brief brush with fame about seven months ago. Daryl Newman was a Security operative on the ill-fated flyer which crashed in the Roosevelt Ranges, killing Councillor Karl Johannsen and everyone on board – with the exception of Mr Newman and a young girl known only as Elena.

‘As you may remember, Mr Newman walked out of the Ranges with the little girl, and would probably have been given a hero's welcome, except for the fact that the same evening both of them disappeared. Until he came to see me yesterday, no one had heard a word from either of them since that time.'

The camera panned to the face of the man sitting in the chair opposite her.

‘The first thing everyone would like to know, Daryl, is where you have been for the past months, and why you chose to disappear in the first place.'

Daryl appeared confident as he looked straight into the camera. ‘The “where” will have to remain a secret for now, Amanda. But the “why” is one of the reasons I came back.'

Gaston sat rigid in his seat. Kennedy covered his mouth, holding back the bile he could feel building up inside him.

On screen, Daryl continued. ‘I . . .
we
ran away because we were in danger of being murdered. By the same man who destroyed the flyer.'

‘Do you mean that you can confirm what many have suspected – that it was indeed sabotage?' Amanda Kostas fed him the pre-arranged questions.

‘It was. And I can name the man who damaged the field-generator, disabled the flight computer and planted the bomb, so that the flyer would be destroyed, along with everyone on it, and the wreckage might not be found for years. I can also name the person who paid him to do it.'

In front of the screen, both men were staring, waiting for the horror to unfold. But Amanda Kostas cut in. ‘Before you name names, Daryl, I must warn you that without evidence to back up your claims, you risk serious criminal charges, and the network must dissociate itself from anything you might claim to know.' With the camera turned back on him, Daryl caught the wink. Amanda had arranged the statement more as theatre than insurance.

‘There
is
evidence, Amanda. I can guarantee evidence on that and a number of other things.'

‘Such as?' The reporter was really enjoying her ‘scoop of a lifetime', and Daryl paused theatrically to heighten the suspense. ‘Secret political pay-offs, conspiracy . . . and the fact that the whole of the recent election was a hoax. That the votes counted by the electoral computer were programmed before the poll ever took place, by someone in the pay of the Deucalion Mining Corporation and others whose interests are not those of this community.' Again, he paused. He had reached the end of the rehearsed lines. Now came the
ad lib
.

‘The name of the assassin is Matthias DeGroot. He was hired by the now President, Dimitri Gaston, through his assistant, a man called Kennedy. The payments were made through secret accounts funded by the DMC and other Earthside interests, who also arranged for a secret override program to be installed into the electoral computer while it was being prepared two years ago back on Earth.

‘I have the codes and passwords to access every secret file on the Central Presidential mainframe, and Security can get the evidence within the hour.'

‘Why do it this way? Why not go straight to Security?' Amanda Kostas leaned forward in her chair. Under the circumstances, it wasn't surprising that her customary cool had almost deserted her.

‘Isn't it obvious? How would I know who to trust? I might be dead before anything was proven. This way, I am safe here in the studio, in the public eye. And if they do get me, at least the world knows.'

The rest of the speech was lost as Gaston vaulted from the chair, running for the mainframe console. His fingers flashed over the keys, deleting files and information. Finally he collapsed with relief. ‘Look all you like,' he whispered, a hysterical edge to his voice. ‘You'll find nothing.' His secret fortune was gone, lost in the virtual vacuum of cyberspace, but at least he was safe. There was nothing to support the accusations. They would die away with time, even if some of the dirt stuck.

He turned to Kennedy, but his words of encouragement died on his lips. Dimitri Gaston watched his assistant's face crumble as he stared, terrified, at the screen.

Stomach turning, he moved across to where he could see the tube. And he knew it was finally over. For scrolling across the screen to the accompaniment of a voice-over commentary was every byte of the information he had so recently deleted.

He would never know it, but on an island somewhere off the eastern coast of the inland sea, at that very moment, a young man was watching the same scene on an ether-linkup, and congratulating himself on his extreme cleverness.

‘I told you you'd
really
like it,' Pete Tang said, to no one in particular.

32

ECHOES

Gaita's Reach

Vaana (Northern Coastal Region)

28/14/149

DARYL

Cael died last week, just a little over a month before the big celebration. I'm sure it wouldn't have worried him to travel Beyond and miss it. He never was one for celebrations.

He finished his last Wall a few days before he died. I think it was important to him that he did. He told me once that there was only one Wall that he didn't finish, but he never told me the reason. But this last Wall, he said, was special, and I was to visit it after he was gone.

I followed his wishes, and after Saebi had sung him Beyond, and after I had said my own private prayers, I set out for the Cave, high in the cliff overlooking the beach where we landed on our way to the island all those years ago.

I made my way inside. I had to crouch to enter, because the entrance was Elokoi height. Inside, the roof curved up into shadow, and my torchlight looked weak and insignificant. I played it around the dark interior, until I found what I was looking for. The Wall, an unbroken record from the start of Elokoi history, through the Great Trek to the last pictures, which were Cael's own creations, depicting the Journey of Returning. Four years of hardship and slow progress through the harshest country on the planet

If I live forever, maybe I'll begin to understand the minds of the Elokoi. When Gaston was exposed, Denny spoke to Cael and Saebi. He told them things would be different now. That there would be no opposition to their new ‘state', which they would call Vaana. He also said that the Trek back was unnecessary, that whoever won the new election would arrange for transportation to take them all home.

But they refused. They didn't discuss it with the Elders. They didn't say they'd consider it. They just thanked him, and said it was impossible.

Poor Denny. He loves them like family, but he doesn't understand them any more than I do. He kept on at them, asking why they wanted to go through with it, but they just looked at him and quoted Rael:
Don't ask why. Is just . . . is.

Years later, Saebi explained it to me. I think she understood my offworlder thick-headedness by then. ‘Tellers almost gone,' she said. ‘Trek important time. To Teach. To learn. Important things. Share Dreams. Learn to be Elokoi again.'

For once even
I
understood.

I remembered that conversation as I stood in front of the Pictures on the Wall. I had reached the end. I knew it was the end, even without looking. I had seen almost every one of Cael's Walls.

Only this time, I was wrong.

As I turned to go, I caught a small flash of colour at the very edge of the ring of torchlight. And as I swept the beam on a little further, the light dropped from my hands. For there on the Wall, beside the history of his people, Cael had left a final gift. To me. A panel filled with strange creatures, painted in bright colours, framed with a pattern of circles and lines. Childish pictures, but painted with the touch of a master. And they spoke to something deep in me that I had thought was lost forever.

As I bent down to pick up the fallen torch, I paused. Because over the sound of the distant waves, beneath the silence of the Cave, I thought I caught the echo of an ancient Song.

Carmody Island

Inland Sea (Eastern Region)

29/15/149 Standard

ELENA

I return to the island often, though my work here ended years ago. The school still runs without me, and the new generation still learns what it means to be Icaran. But I love to come here and watch them play. The greatest gift we can give our children is childhood. And that is the main reason they are here.

In some ways, the island is as secret as it was half a century ago. Oh, everybody knows it is here, and everybody has a theory about why so many parents send their children to a boarding school so far from civilisation. But they don't know.

Just as they don't know that there are any of us with the mind-powers.

In the first few years after the events of 101, there were rumours. But the evidence was gone – even from the hard-files, and the rumours starved to death.

Jane's first great-granddaughter, Rhae, arrived this year. I wonder how she will find the island. What she will learn. She will learn the use of her mind, of course. From teachers of her own kind. But she will, we hope, learn more. From the Teller.

Saani, Saebi's eldest daughter lives here on the island with the children for five months of every year, as part of her
haaj
.
From her, the children learn the Songs, and the Stories that are as much a part of their heritage as the history of the Republic of Deucalion. But they also learn the meaning of ‘the way'. One day, our numbers will have grown. One day, we will have the potential to rule. Only if we understand the way of the Elokoi will we be able to resist the temptation to try.

Jane, of course, remains as obsessive as ever, but we love her. They granted her a lifetime lease on one of the labs at the Genetics Facility, so she can continue her work on hybrid fruit trees. I guess being the wife of a former Congressional Leader carries certain privileges.

I asked Denny once why he chose politics, when he could have gone into geology. After the Revolution, Research Funding was opened up, and he could have walked into a research position. He just smiled and said, ‘Politics is a lot like seismology. You listen to the rumbles, and try to work out what they mean.'

I haven't heard from Daryl in quite a while, but that's not surprising. People who live with the Elokoi usually forget how to write. Of course, that didn't happen to Rachael, his wife, but then writing was in her blood. Her grandfather was AJL Tolhurst, the historian. He was years ahead of his time, learning the Elokoi word-speech, and trying to educate the world to understand what they had to offer.

RJ met Daryl when she was interviewing him, doing research for her grandfather's book on the Deucalion Revolution. She finished it herself, after his death. I've met her a few times, but not recently. Daryl moves around a lot. He's still advisor to the plantation committees of the Elokoi cooperatives. They export Ocra tea and Capyjou to Earth. The Old Earthers still pay a fortune for the tea. They don't eat the Capyjou, of course. Even on Earth, they aren't that desperate. But they do feed it to their cattle, and the results in milk yield and meat quality more than outweigh the importation costs. So I guess Daryl got his farm in the end, after all.

And me? I'm sitting here on the north beach, watching the waves wash onto the sand, and I'm thinking that this island must be about the most unconfined place in the universe.

EPILOGUE:

THE SONG OF THE HEART

(Extracts from the works of RJ Tolhurst transcribed to Archive Disk with the author's permission, 12/14/165 Standard)

From:
Memoirs of a Teenage Revolutionary (
Chapter Thirteen
)

. . . In the end, though the history books refer to ‘The Deucalion Revolution', from where we stood, it was really no more than a Unilateral Declaration of Independence. In a few short minutes of air-time, a hundred years of colonial rule was brought to an inglorious end.

Dimitri Gaston, the illegitimate ‘first President' of Deucalion, was never seen again. His lieutenant, Denham Kennedy, when he was arrested a few years later, shed no light on his whereabouts, claiming that they had gone their separate ways on the night of the ‘disaster'. He did say one strange thing, however, when he was an old man in prison. I never saw it reported, though it ‘did the rounds' in Security circles.

One of the guards asked him if he thought his old boss was still alive somewhere. Kennedy turned to him and shook his head. Then he leaned close and whispered,
‘Some
people you don't let down. If you do, there is nowhere in the universe you can hide where they won't find you.' My source swore it was true, but Security people are known for their tall stories.

Matthias DeGroot, Deucalion's most infamous assassin, was finally captured in 107. He was teaching school in a township in the Northern Fringes. Most of the townspeople were surprised. He didn't look like a monster, they said. In fact, he was the best teacher the town had ever had. You never can tell.

Unlike most revolutions, the ‘Revolution of 101' brought a new era of prosperity to Deucalion. The owners of the DMC were tried in absentia
for crimes against the Electoral Act, racketeering and bribing public officials, and when the penalty imposed – two hundred billion credits, payable within fifteen Standard months – was not forthcoming, the state confiscated all properties and assets of the Corporation on Deucalion as payment for the outstanding fines, cancelling all leases and options granted under colonial rule.

Trade with Earth continued virtually unchanged, however. Regardless of political differences, they were heavily dependent on supplies of Deucalion minerals and raw materials. Of course, with the profits returning to Deucalion instead of remaining off-planet, the standard of living over the past decades has risen to equal that of Earth in the golden age of the twentieth century. Payment is demanded in finished goods, as the concept of ‘paper profits' was never as popular on Deucalion as it always seemed to be on Old Earth.

An interesting footnote to this development is that the boom in manufacturing prompted by this increased demand has actually had a positive effect on the employment rate in some regions of the mother-planet.

The state of Vaana (which, in Elokoi, means
Vaana –
there simply is no Standard translation) thrives on the shores of the inland sea. Desalination plants, and a monumental irrigation program, with thousands of kilometres of pipe, pumping water from huge floating catchments anchored in the centre of the mid-ocean rain belt, have turned the desert into what has become known as the ‘Garden of the West'.

As we approach the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of settlement, we do so with some pride. The C-ships still arrive at the rate of four or five a year, and the shuttles at the rate of four or five a month. Life is good.

And the future?

My friend, Saebi t-Aiby-el-Rhae, in her famous transcription of
Thoughtsong of the Returning,
wrote:

Who can see the spring,

Beneath the desert sand?

Who can tell the stories

Of the unborn generations?

Who can know?

Knowing is a leaf on the wind,

A tear in the deepwater.

All understanding

Is the Song of the Heart,

The Dream of the Soul.

A glimpse of eternity

Through the eye of the Eternal

We do not choose

We are chosen.

We do not own the Dream

We borrow it from the Universe.

Next year, the first C-ship sets out on a journey from here to the third (as yet unnamed) planet in the Casia system, another fifty light-years out into the galaxy. Perhaps there they will find a world more inviting than Deucalion.

Perhaps they won't . . .