Great North Road (76 page)

She’d been swimming with her brother Raul and their friends Jenna and Ibiqu in a shallow lake near her home when the eerie siren wail sounded across the habitat. The light bracelets around the axial spindle shifted to a strong red tint and began to pulsate. Rebka stared up at the signal in rebellious annoyance. Her personal interface, in the form of a cute blue-and-green bead necklace, was lying on the shore next to her towel and clothes. Nobody could call her directly to urge her along to the shelter hall. No one would know if she spent another ten minutes in the water. It was such fun splashing around, diving down to the artificially sculpted lake bed with its freshwater coral growths. The fish were all large, colorful, and curious about the interlopers in their aquatic world.

“Come on,” Raul called. He was treading water three meters away, beckoning her on.

“I think I’ll just stay here for a bit,” Rebka said.

Jenna and Ibiqu stopped swimming and stared at her in a mix of shock and surprise.

“It’s a flare warning,” Raul said, as if that should explain everything.

“It’s a practice. And anyway, even if it was real, the particle storm wouldn’t reach us for another couple of hours. And even then it wouldn’t affect this habitat. Our shell has arb molecule shielding. It’s only the original sections where it’s a problem.” As if to emphasize the point, she duckdived smoothly, swimming down to the sandy lake bed with big easy strokes. The once familiar topography was now different and mysterious in the dusky red light. Long sluggish ribbons of weed wiggled around her as she slipped between the coral bulbs, tickling her skin. Fish darted about, vanishing into fissures. She play-grabbed at them with her fingers.

A hand closed tightly around her ankle, and she twisted in surprise. Raul was there, cheeks all puffed out, pointing vigorously at the surface. Rebka spread her arms wide in a theatrical surrender, and kicked lazily for the surface.

“Don’t do that,” Raul stormed when they were back on top. All big-brother protective and angry.

“You’re so government,” she taunted as they headed back to shore where Jenna and Ibiqu were already getting out. “You should join the GE commission. They love ordering people about.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grumbled back. “You listen to your lessons, but you don’t understand them.”

She ignored him as they quickly toweled down. He was being equally stubborn, pretending she didn’t exist. Jenna went over to him. Rebka watched as the girl put her arms around her brother’s shoulders. A tender touch, as if she could ease away his frustration and upset.

Some instinctive unease made Rebka realize she wasn’t going to be tagging along with Raul much more. He preferred hanging out with friends his own age these days. She resented that; Raul had been such fun since she arrived home from the hospital. Exciting, protective big brother, rampaging through the habitat, getting into trouble together. Laughing together. Daring each other on. Sharing punishments when they inevitably got caught.

Perhaps that was why she was so hard on him these days. She’d always known this time would arrive …

The shelter hall wasn’t exactly a hardship. A long windowless structure of thick arb-coated metal with corridors branching into igloo-like communal chambers. There was food and games and a little theater show in the evening for the kids.

Rebka sat through the amateur “all-join-in” sing-along production of Snow White with a sullen sulk, refusing to open her mouth at even the most jolly of songs. She didn’t sleep much that night in the girls’ dormitory, preferring to play the most aggressive games her interface could access—and she knew some good work-around routines to get at the 18+ section of the habitat entertainment net.
Thank you, Krista—now, that’s somebody who knows how to be a proper elder sibling.

She was expecting the full censure and smart talking-to from her parents when they went home the following morning. But they knew her moods and responses better than she realized.

It wasn’t until four days later that her mother sat down with her on the broad patio area, under the shade of the burgeoning palm trees that were now overwhelming the house.

“So what was wrong with the shelter hall?”

Rebka sighed long and hard. She might have known it wasn’t going to be overlooked. “Nothing was wrong with it. I was just having a nice time in the lake. I was coming anyway, you know. Raul is just such a panic-merchant.”

“Actually, Raul is quite remarkably sensible for a teenager. I was expecting him to be the troublesome one.”

“Meaning what? Meaning
I am
? Well why don’t you just send me back, then, if I’m so much trouble.” Arms folded stubbornly, pouting as far as her lips would stretch.

“Send you back?” her mother said in a clear tone that made Rebka realize she might just be overdoing the drama.

“Well, come on. I’m not stupid.”

“No. Just obstinate. That’s what I like about you.”

“Mum!” She held up her hand. “Difference. Yeah?”

“Certainly is. So?”

“You’re about as black as possible; Dad was born in India; and my skin’s so white you’d think I was covered in snow.”

“You’ve never seen snow.”

“Duh. Zone!”

“I’ll thank you not to take that tone, young lady. Now, why don’t you tell me how long this has been bothering you?”

“I don’t know. Like forever.”

“No it hasn’t. You used to be the happiest of all my children. I was so proud, after everything you’ve been through.”

“So you’re not anymore, then?”

“Hoo boy. Okay, what do you want to know?”

“Where did I come from? Are you my parents?”

“You came from one of the distant planets.”

“The what? I’ve never heard of them.”

“Ah, something you don’t know. Good, well, you look them up when you can spare the time from hacking into the habitat’s 18+ entertainment cache.”

Rebka flushed bright red.

“The distant worlds are planets that aren’t affiliated to the rest of the trans-stellar community, usually for political reasons,” her mother explained. “And you were brought here for treatment, because we can offer the best genetic therapy there is.”

“And the other? You and Dad?”

“You don’t have any of my DNA in your cells, nor your father’s. Do you believe that means you aren’t our daughter? That we don’t love you just as much as Raul and Krista?”

“No,” Rebka muttered. Now her eyes were getting all wet for no reason. “I’m sorry, Mum. I just thought … I don’t know what I thought.”

Monique went over and put her arms around the upset girl. “Now listen to me. From the moment I saw you being brought onto the spaceplane at Gibraltar, I wanted nothing more than to protect and nurture you. One day you will have to be told about your heritage, because it is unique and special. But we haven’t talked about that because you are still a child, and I want that to last for as long as possible, because I love your laughter, and your excitement, and I like beating you at tennis, still; and I even like your temper tantrums because it proves what a determined little horror you are. And when you smile it is the most precious, wonderful moment in the universe for me.”

Rebka couldn’t help it, she was sobbing openly now. “Am I awful? Is that it? Am I from bad people? Will I be bad, too?”

“No, of course not. Far from it. And this is why we haven’t made an issue of this. The past is over and you have the whole of your future to live in. And when you do face up to this issue, your dad and I will be there to help you through anything you find difficult. But for now, will you please just concentrate on having a good time? There’s so much in this weird and enchanting habitat of ours to enjoy. So much to learn.”

She nodded solemnly. “I will. I’ll be good.”

“You don’t have to be perfect, dear. Just figure out which rules you shouldn’t break.”

“Like ignoring a rad-haz alert?”

“Like reacting as if it’s designed to annoy you personally. It’s not. We didn’t always have arb molecule shielding.”

“I know. I told Raul that.”

“You really do pay attention to your lessons, don’t you?”

“I like school,” she insisted.

“Thank heavens for that.”

“And I let you win at tennis.”

“Oh really?”

“Why are we here, Mum? Why did Constantine build the habitat?”

“Because somebody had to.”

“Why? What’s it all for?”

“Jupiter is an enclave of human civilization that we are determined will not fall. We are both a refuge and if necessary a seed to regrow humanity should the Zanth succeed in wiping out all our worlds. Your father and I came here with Constantine because we believed in his vision, to build a society that rejects avarice and selfishness, and more than that, one that can help the rest of the human race.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Rebka asked excitedly. “Helping people?”

“Yes. Even though they don’t know it yet.”

*

The Trans-Stellar Situation Center was a large concrete-ribbed chamber on the lowest level of the HDA headquarters, itself the size of a small town buried a supersafe kilometer below Alice Springs in the Australian desert. From there, its designers believed, it would be able to function for at least a month after a Zanthstorm began, leading the ultimate battle to protect the old homeworld long enough for the inevitable evacuation. It was a fight that would largely be coordinated from the situation center, whose walls were covered with big curving holographic panes, each one showing various enhanced images of every human-settled star system. Fleets of observation satellites, possessed of more sensor boom spikes than sea urchins, circled those stars in orbits that varied from a couple of million kilometers above the blazing coronas right out to the frozen wastes of the outer cometary belts. Their only function was to monitor the quantum structure of spacetime for any hint of the distortions that were the precursors to a Zanthswarm, beaming the data back to the planetary gateways, and from there through the dedicated, heavily protected HDA network on Earth.

The entire monitoring set up was completely automated, with the most powerful AI cores ever built analyzing and interpreting every quiver and fluctuation in every field interstice. That didn’t prevent HDA from filling the center with more than a hundred highly specialist technical staff, each sitting alertly at a zone console, checking the telemetry streams from the satellites and reviewing the status of each star system on a continual basis.

They were ready for any sign of an emerging Zanthswarm that might threaten a world settled by humans.

However, for all the contingencies they trained for, all the different scenarios thought up by the tactical review board, the situation center didn’t quite know how to respond to the news of sunspots on Sirius. There certainly wasn’t an alert status that reflected it. And the information bubbling through the transnet was more gossip than hard data. That, then, was their first priority, Captain Toi decided, to determine exactly what was happening. As head of the Sol watch section, she also had oversight for St. Libra, which was the HDA’s perennial problem child.

Unlike every other trans-stellar world, the giant planet didn’t have its own HDA section. Nor was there an HDA base there, either, just an office in Highcastle. St. Libra was only a minority HDA member. That was all down to money. The Highcastle council, which was the largest democratic government on St. Libra, declined to tax its citizens and corporations at a level that full HDA membership required. Mainly because Highcastle was a company town, the council set up by Northumberland Interstellar and its bioil compatriots. The theory drawn up by accountants was that everyone on the planet (under their dominion) lived within a few hundred kilometers of the gateway. They could all get out fast, unlike other planets whose pioneering citizens gloried in spreading out from pole to pole. This was in the days before Bartram went and established Abellia, of course, but even after that nothing changed.

Then there were the Independencies, which without exception were openly hostile to any notion of what they denounced as
submitting to HDA’s repressive militaristic authority
. That left the whole problem of what would happen if there ever was a Zanthswarm on Sirius open to a great deal of political buck passing. Would the GE allow all the rebels and anarchists and anti-authoritarians and religious fundamentalists back through the gateway—assuming any of them ever made it that far during a Zanthswarm? Politically it would be difficult to slam the door shut on millions of people who would be killed if they couldn’t get back. Which then left the possibility open for HDA providing evacuation cover, paid for by every other planet’s taxpayers. The final decision of just how humanitarian humanity would actually be was one that was constantly pushed off every government’s agenda.

Now Captain Toi had to make the preliminary analysis, which might well result in finally getting an answer to that thorniest of questions. She turned to the colonel in command and asked: “What do I do?”

“Get more data” was the simple answer.

Toi looked up at the single large wall pane that displayed all the spacetime structure data the HDA received from St. Libra. Compared with every other pane in the center it was almost blank. It was impossible to launch satellites from St. Libra, since no space vehicle could ever get through the rings. Instead, HDA had chosen to place five quantum sensors across the Ambrose continent. Theoretically they should be able to detect the kind of instabilities that indicated an impending Zanthswarm. If they were lucky, Highcastle might get warned half an hour before the chunks began to fall.

Right now, none of the detectors were registering any kind of quantum anomaly. So the HDA, the greatest protective force ever assembled by the human race, would have to rely on a bunch of mildly eccentric telescope owners in Highcastle to base a judgment that might ultimately result in millions of people living or dying. And she didn’t even know how many telescopes there were. “Not acceptable,” Toi told the pane forcefully.

General Khurram Shaikh arrived in the center an hour later, responding to the colonel’s request. As usual, he was in full dress uniform. As he came in he was flanked by his staff officers, Major Fendes and Major Vermekia. “So where do we stand?” he asked the colonel in charge of the center as he settled in behind the Sol section. “Do I need to issue a Zanthswarm alert?”