Divisions (23 page)
Authors: Ken MacLeod
‘Ah.’ The young man frowned, trying too obviously not to look impressed. ‘Is that imperial, or metric?’
Before this negotiation could go further we hit the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the picture went hazy and then black. The air of New Mars is thinner than Earth’s—not that we were relying much on aerobraking. The outside view went red, and comms and active-defence could do very little. Nor could we. We just had to lie there and hope that the shrieking and buffetting were caused by our passage through the air and not nearby airbursts, each of which could be the last thing we knew. Malley seemed to be praying again, and I almost wished I could do the same, even with his agnostic reservations. But I’d been a good materialist in too many foxholes to relent now. All I would ask of a god is unconditional love and close air support, and I could rely on Boris for both.
The drogues jolted us three times, four, five—the thinner air meant more were needed than on Earth, even with the lesser gravity. There was a final flare of the jet which piled on the gees and helped deploy the struts, and then we were down. I could hear nothing but the creak of my chest and the pneumatic sigh of the settling struts.
‘We’re down in one piece,’ said Andrea. ‘No incoming missiles, and
Carbon
Conscience
just checked in. They’re spiralling down and report no ground fire.’
Carbon
Conscience
just checked in. They’re spiralling down and report no ground fire.’
People attempted a cheer. Andrea lined up a comms laser on the relay at the wormhole and passed on the news of our safe landing.
Painfully, making full use of the suit’s power-assistance, I moved to a sitting position and stood up.
‘Everybody OK?’
They all struggled upright.
‘Feel as if I’ve been in a fight,’ said Tony. ‘Where are we?’
‘Forty miles outside Ship City,’ said Andrea. ‘In a field covered with some kind of monoculture.’
‘It’s something people do when they don’t have hydroponics,’ Malley said.
‘A non-co thing, is it?’ asked Yeng.
I was pleased to see her beginning to be sarcastic back.
A short while later we discovered that it was indeed a non-co thing, as I peered out of the airlock hatch to see a man standing in semi-darkness, just outside our circle of lights and the wider circle of ruination our landing had caused. He was holding what looked like a shotgun. The land around him was level in all directions, with low, lit mounds here and there which I guessed were dwellings of some kind. The stars seemed closer than they do in space, and, strangely, brighter.
‘I don’t know who or what you ay-are,’ he shouted. ‘But you pay-ay for this day-mage, or you git the hail off mah lay-and.’
‘What payment do you want?’ I yelled back, giddy with relief and quite prepared to offer the man a ton of gold, imperial or metric.
‘Hey,’ said Suze, from behind my shoulder. ‘Let me handle this.’
The farmer, who introduced himself as Andrew Calvin Powell, turned out to be quite different from the non-cos I’d encountered in London. After a few minutes of narrow-eyed dickering (‘What’s that in grey-ams?’) he seemed delighted by what Suze offered by way of compensation, and invited us all to ‘Come on in and way-at fer the helicopters.’
‘Military helicopters?’ I asked, glancing anxiously back up the ladder.
The man laughed, white teeth flashing in his friendly, sunburned face. ‘Good Lord no, may’am. Last I heard, Mutual Protection had taken you all under their wing. No, you’re getting a visit from the city big shots, them as have been dragged out of urgent business meetings—and beds and bars! They won’t be here for a good hour at least, while they get their act together. And your pals in the stealth bomber have lay-anded safely at the airport, where they’re talking to reporters.’
I signalled for the rest to come down the ladder. There was little point in
staying with the ship—it was more than capable of looking after itself, and so were we. Our suits could maintain encrypted radio contact with it—or with the fighter-bomber, when that was closer. In fact, we could do better than that, I thought, and tapped my cuff as though I had an itch under it. The tiny beaded eyes of nanocameras formed, barely noticeable, in the suit’s fabric.
staying with the ship—it was more than capable of looking after itself, and so were we. Our suits could maintain encrypted radio contact with it—or with the fighter-bomber, when that was closer. In fact, we could do better than that, I thought, and tapped my cuff as though I had an itch under it. The tiny beaded eyes of nanocameras formed, barely noticeable, in the suit’s fabric.
‘How do you know all this?’ I asked, as we gathered around Powell and set off across eight hundred yards of ploughed ground towards the glowing windows of his house, which was in the shape of a long, low mound. ‘Was it on television before you came out?’
‘Don’t you hay-ave cortical downlinks?’
‘Well, in a way,’ I said carefully. ‘We just don’t use them for
news
.’
news
.’
He gave me a sideways look. ‘Same old Reds, eh? Controlled news and lousy consumer electronics. Way-ell, at least you’re fray-endly, like the old New Viet Cong back home.’
‘Hey,’ said Tony, tramping along beside me through the muddy field, ‘I remember them.’
‘Wait a minute,’ I said, before Tony could launch into political reminiscence, ‘it isn’t like that. We have problems with electronics, sure, but that’s because of the fast folk. We have all the fancy tech we want, but we’ve just developed it in a different direction.’
‘My old grandpaw told me the goddamn Russkies useta say that,’ Powell said, with maddening slowness and imperturbability. ‘And the only things it was true of was the Energia booster, the Mig fighter and the AK-47. The rest of their kit was cray-ap.’
Behind me I could hear Malley laughing.
‘Oh, come on,’ I said, ‘how do you think we can see in the dark?’ I waved a hand in the dimness.
‘Not with gene-spliced visual intensifiers, I’ll bet,’ said Powell.
I blinked my contacts to a higher acuity and said nothing until we arrived at Powell’s back door. He stood back on the doorstep and gestured for us to go inside. Just before I did so, I got the suit to repel all the mud from my boots, and to go through a spectacular transformation as I stepped dramatically over the threshold into the brightly lit room beyond.
I turned around with a twirl of skirt, noticing with a downward glance that at least some of the suit’s cameras had cleverly turned themselves into visible beads. ‘Do people here have clothes that can do that?’
Powell grinned. ‘That’s a very fine dress, may-am,’ was all he said. He waited for us to step inside—the other women followed my example, each in her own fashion—and came in and racked his shotgun at the door, then led us through his house.
The first room we passed through was just a store: bare walls of concrete—much the same as sea-crete, except that the limestone component is fossil—with racks and shelves of tools and seeds and parked robots. Then Powell led us along a corridor, past closed wooden doors, into the main part of his house. Somewhere along the way the flooring changed to a deep carpet, which Powell stepped on to without even shaking the mud from his shoes. A few steps later his shoes were clean. I couldn’t quite catch how it was happening. The carpet’s pile shimmered slightly as he walked on it; that was all.
From outside, the house had looked quite large, an artificial grass-covered knoll, about thirty yards long by four high. Inside, it looked even bigger, because it turned out to be thirty yards square and partly underground. We came out of the corridor on to a balcony that ran all around a sunken atrium, whose roof was a layer of glass, behind which we could see torpid fish and the ripple-distorted, starry sky. The lighting was brighter in the lower level, which was furnished with what looked like leather-covered sofas and chairs and a few tables. A woman was sitting at one of the tables, and as we entered she stood up and smiled at us. We trooped after Powell down a stair that followed the curving wall to the floor, past a pool with tall plants growing up from it and fish swimming around.
All around the walls were screens, apparently blank; a few large, still pictures of people and Earth landscapes; and a great number of unfamiliar objects, most of them vaguely organic in appearance but probably artificial. They clung to the walls or squatted on shelves or hung from the ceiling. You never quite saw them move, but at a second glance they gave the disconcerting impression that they just had.
‘Folks, meet my wife,’ said Powell, turning around and looking at us all.
The woman who’d been sitting at the table stepped towards us, smiling. She was about five foot six tall with a sturdy, curvy build which her rather tight, gem-beaded red dress did little to conceal and much to enhance. Her blonde hair cascaded around her shoulders in elaborate curls and waves. Her face was covered with cosmetic make-up, quite unnecessarily: it was young and pretty underneath all the powder and colouring. She held out her hands and grasped mine between them.
‘Well hi there,’ she said. ‘I’m real pleased and honoured to meet you. My name’s Abigail, and you must be Miss Ellen May.’
‘Just Ellen, neighbour Abigail,’ I said. ‘I’m pleased and honoured to meet you too.’
‘Oh, how kind of you,’ she said. Her accent was less noticeable than Andrew’s, and in fact from that point on I stopped noticing his. The main thing I noticed about her voice was the warmth. As I introduced the rest of the crew she greeted all of them like long-lost friends. She had heard of
Malley, and seemed awe-struck to meet him. By the time the introductions were over Andrew—or someone, or something—had covered the table with an inviting array of bottles and glasses. The couple insisted on sitting us all down on the biggest sofas and serving us drinks, than sat down facing us by the table and served themselves.
Malley, and seemed awe-struck to meet him. By the time the introductions were over Andrew—or someone, or something—had covered the table with an inviting array of bottles and glasses. The couple insisted on sitting us all down on the biggest sofas and serving us drinks, than sat down facing us by the table and served themselves.
Andrew Powell raised his glass. ‘Peace and freedom!’
We drank to that. I felt a bit bad about what we all might think of it, any day now; but we could always hope. There was a moment of awkward pause, not surprisingly: the etiquette of first contact between people from two longseparated human societies was in its early days.
‘It was brave of you,’ I said to Andrew, ‘to go out to us with nothing but a shotgun. You didn’t know who we might be, or how we might react.’
He waved his hand. ‘Not real brave,’ he said. He and his wife shared a smile. ‘Abigail here had you covered from the house, with enough firepower to stop a regiment.’
‘Ah,’ I said, thoughtfully. ‘But you’d have been in the line of fire, yes?’
He shrugged. ‘Backed up just the other week. Some memories I’d be sorry to lose.’ Another shared smile, a nudge and a giggle from Abigail. ‘But anyway, I weren’t that worried. Had you lot figured for a human expedition ever since the first reports this evening. Just gosh darn lucky you landed on my patch. I’ll be showin’ off that site for years, and prob’bly charging admission!’
Abigail must have misinterpreted our puzzled expressions. ‘Oh, you see, we don’t have no problem with resurrection. We both fell asleep way back in the twenty-first, and we were raised again only five years ago. Which is why—’ she waved around, with a look of slight embarrassment ‘—we’re still only moderately well-off, as you can see. I mean, we can’t really afford to have children yet. But we have each other, and our little farm, and God has been kind to us.’
Her thick eyelashes emphasized a few quick blinks.
‘Didn’t have no truck with religion until I died,’ said Andrew awkwardly. ‘But that experience kind of concentrates one’s mind on spiritual things, and when I found myself buck naked and dripping wet and looking up at a Red Cross chopper, I tell you I just got down on my knees and praised the Lord.’
‘What you might call a born-again Christian,’ said Malley. The rest of us didn’t quite get why Andrew and Abigail laughed so much they had to clutch each other for support.
‘You could say that,’ Andrew gasped, knuckling his eyes. He took a deep breath and spoke more seriously. ‘But apart from the, uh, relief and thankfulness and so on, when I had time to think about it I figured, well, if mere man can do that then you’d be a
damned
fool to think the Almighty couldn’t
raise all the dead in His own good time, and I knew that only Jesus could stand between me and His righteous indignation on that day.’
damned
fool to think the Almighty couldn’t
raise all the dead in His own good time, and I knew that only Jesus could stand between me and His righteous indignation on that day.’
He grinned at our politely frozen faces. ‘OK, that’s me done my witnessing to you godless communists, and you’ll hear no more gospel from me unless’n you ask for more, and I’ll gladly give it. But the good book says not to cast your pearls before—’
‘It sure does,’ Abigail interrupted, with apparently unnecessary haste. ‘Now let me get you all another drink.’
Our forty minutes or so of enjoying the hospitality of Andrew and Abigail did us all a great deal of good, though at the time it seemed only to give us a little relaxation and a sense of unreality arising from the sudden change from our dangerous descent to this scene of sumptuous comfort. As soon as they’d got past the ‘witnessing’, which they apparently regarded as something they had to do, however briefly, to any stranger, they chatted to us easily. Mainly about themselves, but even this was a courtesy, as though they didn’t want us to feel we were being interrogated. We all knew that the time for that would shortly come.
They proudly called themselves ‘dirt farmers’; vegetables grown in real soil were a luxury here, supplied to exclusive restaurants for sophisticates who claimed to be able to tell the difference from the carbon-copy, and who could afford the—considerably more evident—difference in price. (I had to give Yeng an unobtrusive nudge at this point.) Variety was their speciality—Andrew explained how much searching of the gene-banks he had to do to keep ahead of changing fads. Most of the work on the farm was done by what they called ‘dumb machines’, and not by what they called ‘hired help’. (Another nudge to keep Yeng quiet.)
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