Panspermia Deorum (17 page)

*

Kolorov wanted
Oleg Malenkov do the talking. Unknown to the other oligarchs, it
was Malenkov who had actually instigated the idea for Soyuz to
sever its tenuous connection with NERO. Kolorov had been thinking
along the same lines, and was a ready listener. They also agreed it
would be wise for nobody else to know the two of them had discussed
this prior to Kolorov inviting the others to meet. As the host, the
Soyuz supremo rose to his feet.

“I could
suggest several ways of getting the ball rolling, but I am a man
who specialises in propulsion engineering, so I would suggest any
one of you would be better placed than myself to suggest the kind
of investment and drawdown facilities which would satisfy the
entire group. I can easily deal with breaking away from NERO, in
fact I can do that whenever we have the rest in place. On the
matter of anonymity, I also bow to your experience, in exactly the
same way I would if there was any ‘obstruction’ you felt would
require removal. Would anyone like to comment?”

Malenkov raised
his hand and took the floor, and made sure it did not look like a
rehearsal.

“I am mainly
concerned about protecting my family in the short term. However, I
suggest we avoid trying to be too clever with respect to where and
how we make the investment. This anarchy movement worries me with
respect to certain banks in terms of indiscretion. We have seen how
the terrorists accrete assets. Manufacturing units and law
enforcement people are just the beginning. The way I see it, during
the remaining time we oligarchs have to survive, we must gradually
become invisible. I would suggest there is no truly safe way to
continue to grow our businesses. And nobody in their right mind
would want to take over our burdens by acquisition, otherwise we
would not be sitting here today. I will be closing down a few of my
operations and bank the liquidity in Switzerland. I will repeat
this periodically until I have written off as much as I can afford
to withstand. I am sure the anarchists will see this as
justification of their cause and maybe they will seize the hardware
which has been abandoned. We have to buy time, which correlates to
safety. In the meantime, more ‘would be’ leaders of their movement
will appear above the parapet. They can be picked off one at a
time, and we are all proficient in this methodology. My anonymous
Swiss account would only allow withdrawals by myself. At the times
when Soyuz needs a top up of funds, they should also have an
anonymous account with the same bank, to which we can make a
transfer without a paper trail. It would be similar to a
withdrawal, signed only by me. Kolorov then becomes accountable for
what that amount will achieve. If all of us have similar accounts
we can use one bank to move the projects further along the desired
route. The transferred money to the Soyuz Swiss account should be
for purchase of shares in the company itself. So, Kolorov has to
set up this exchange. I know this will mean I have to give up a
hell of a lot of wealth this way, but we cannot trust offshore
banks in places like the Cayman Islands, and we have to become low
profile people again. Once this is achieved, we either sit out the
rest of our time with lesser ambitions, or we head off to Mars if
we are confronted with reliable information that the asteroid is
going to win. If we do not recognise our current assets as a burden
and a threat in this unravelling society, we will surely become
victims of it. Even if I am the only one of us to move in this
direction, I will do so. I still have enough collateral to acquire
a large slice of Soyuz.”

Malenkov sat
down. Nobody spoke until Kolorov suggested he should leave the room
again while the rest debated what to do next. Even from the next
room he could hear raised voices and banging on the large oak
table. It was going to take quite some time for balance to be
struck; the air was laden with fear of jumping in or fear of
missing out.

J
ulien was rather surprised to hear Geraldine’s voice
when he answered his phone. She never called him directly, always
through his wife.

“Hello, hello,
is that you, Julien?”

“Yes it is,
Geraldine. You sound a little bit apprehensive, is there a
problem?”

“I am afraid
there is. Elise is in hospital. It is not an accident or anything
like that. She has a problem with her kidneys.”

“Ok, Geraldine,
just calm down, please. Exactly what kind of problem?”

“Well, she has
had a couple of fainting spells recently. I pestered her to see the
doctor, and although she said she would, I had to get the doctor to
come here. He found that she has had bouts of kidney failure. He
says she will need a transplant soon. She is on dialysis at the
moment, but the problem is becoming more acute. I thought you
should know because she now seems to take no notice of anything I
say, she only listens to this new friend of hers. She doesn’t seem
to grasp that the doctor is telling her she has a very serious
problem. Julien, you have always been so good to me, so I feel I
can say this. I don’t trust this man. He only became really
interested in her after you inherited all of that money. She will
not say a word against him, but I have to be honest, I have a bad
feeling about him. He wants to marry her. Elise doesn’t want that,
but he won’t stop asking her, even though she’s so poorly. Can you
come to Lyon, please? She is getting weaker instead of stronger,
and I am very worried about her, as is our doctor.”

“Ok, Geraldine,
now first of all, don’t think you are alone with this. I’ll get a
flight tomorrow. Don’t tell anyone I’m coming, I want to meet this
man after I’ve seen Elise. Thank you for getting in touch. Leave it
to me to tell the kids.”

“Yes, of
course, and thank you so much, I’ll stay with her until you get
here.”

*

The descent to
the surface of Mars was something of a white knuckle ride. Not
having an atmosphere to slow the module, or generate such intense
heat as an Earth entry would, gave the illusion of being in a
Bobsleigh with no brakes. A silent runaway vehicle destined to
break up after a hard landing. At last, with the red dust
approaching at an insane speed, the burn kicked in and began to
transform the free-fall into a glide, followed by a gentle bump.
The three scientists aboard thanked their counterparts on the
orbiting Laika for guiding them safely to such a moment of destiny.
They had already agreed to a simultaneous first step on to the
orange-red carpet.

The television
pictures relayed back to Earth, showing the first of the species to
leave their footprints on another ancient planet strangely produced
a nanosecond of unity. Explorers had always been respected for
their bravery. That it registered as such with the anarchists was
but a flicker of homogeneity. Even before they’d heard a word of
the commentary, coordinated explosive devices were detonated in or
around several major cities of the world.

*

A second
meeting had been arranged with the oligarchs to officially
distribute the share certificates, giving them their respective
amounts of equity in Soyuz. This formal gathering was at the Dacha
of Malenkov, in the countryside just outside Moscow. While the
ceremonial trappings were being orchestrated by Kolorov, Malenkov
was busy getting the others to sign a side agreement with the Swiss
bank that the certificates would be lodged with them for
safekeeping. They had all agreed that in the event of some
disaster, either cosmic or anarchic, any individual’s shares would
pass on to the rest of the group. They had all made provision for
their families separately, and didn’t want wives, sons, and
daughters to become targets for the anarchists simply because of
inherited ownership in a controversial blue chip company. The
meeting was brought to an end with the agreement to meet once more
in the Ural Mountains. The venue was the same secret location as
before, for a thorough update of when the destructive nuclear
warheads were to be launched at the asteroid, and more importantly,
precisely where the strikes would take place. This was not a
subject for discussion in a place where there was the slightest
possibility of bugs having been planted. Malenkov outlined his
reasoning.

“Gentlemen, we
shall take all precautions to keep our business private. You all
know where we first met, and this note I am about to hand to you
details the questions to be raised by us as a group, and the
answers to those questions will be provided by our friend at the
head of the table. With the escalating spread of terror groups, we
should no longer mention anyone’s name, unless we know we are not
at risk of eavesdropping by anarchists or what remains of
government control. Thank you for your time, and please help
yourself to Vodka and Caviar.”

*

With the
habitat and lab facilities secured, the scientists gave the all
clear to their colleagues in orbit. Laika’s mission had passed the
first meaningful test. However, the establishment of a base was but
a single task in a long list of those scheduled prior to any
consideration of returning to Earth. Because the planets were
closest to one another every two years, and the journey would take
nine months, Soyuz had to make a compromise call regarding
distance, fuel, time in space for the astronauts, and the crossing
points with the next shuttle. However, they had come down on the
side of keeping those on Mars alive as the highest priority. Laika
had enough nuclear fuel generating capability to make a one year
return trip. The next outgoing craft from Earth, already named
Yuri, would launch when Laika was seven months from Earth. Yuri
would have only three crew, and more than four times as much
survival commodities as Laika. These adjustments had been made
because of the initial reports from the surface of Mars, in
particular, the discovery of both water ice and liquid carbon
dioxide in scattered sinkholes. Stage two of departure clearance
was related to the wellbeing coefficients of the surface dwellers.
A clean bill of health after a minimum of six weeks was considered
necessary before those on board Laika could submit a request to
exit orbit. It would be a tense period of doing very little but
observation, of both a scientific and medical nature, plus the
creation of a map of interesting alternative sites for the future.
Locations which weren’t too far from the first touchdown in Valles
Marineris.

*

A peculiar
trend was emerging in society, which in retrospect appeared to be
quite logical. With the five-year death threat still hanging in the
air, the rebellious, terror-fuelled, bottom-up rejection of
authority, spawned two inevitable trends which conspired to turn
the divide from one of a perpetually stretching
elastic
membrane into a stiff
plastic
barrier which would inevitably
reach a threshold of fracture. As the government and industrial
world suffered escalating attacks, destroying lives, institutions
and buildings, so the rise of coordinated anarchy lurched to new
levels of brutality. The consequent shrinkage of established fiscal
controls pushed the transition from monetary notes ever more
quickly to electronic-only trading. When this filtered down to
smaller and smaller businesses, the rate of bankruptcy spiralled,
and a siege mentality within large corporations essentially killed
off competitiveness. This was most sharply illustrated by banks and
other related financial services, which then cascaded down to
availability of life’s essentials. If you didn’t have a plastic
friend with ample funds, you effectively didn’t have any money or
bargaining power. No means to see beyond the next sunrise – and
crucially, little or no recourse to escape the transition to
stealing just to survive. Ironically, this mudslide of closure of
traditional production output for mass markets raised the
floodwaters of demand on those who had advocated revolution.

During this
phase, infighting and disillusionment led to rapid growth of
Anarchist Barons, creating a massive surge in turf war, which
became pandemic, and devoid of even the basic infrastructure with
which to fashion a cure. Without either banknotes or electronic
trading, direct exchange of goods was the only currency. However,
with barter came plunder, and a definite slowdown in perceived
equality of anarchic doctrine, which had been its raison d’etre.
The process had in fact already begun to evidence big fish
swallowing slightly smaller fish, and the corollary of becoming
blind to the founding objective.

There was now a
chasm of irreparable dimension in the time left before it would be
the asteroid alone which would decide the outcome. An uneven,
three-way contest between oligarchs, mafia, and cosmic
indifference. The final reckoning, whichever persuasion one might
admit to, would lay the ghost to rest that in reality, there was no
such thing as money. Life, food, water, chemicals, technology, were
all that really mattered, unless a person’s faith in the afterlife
prevailed.

*

When Julien and
Geraldine arrived at the hospital, Elise had a visitor. Bernard
Denis, her friend, was holding her hand. Geraldine turned to leave
the private room in intensive care, but Julien asked her to
stop.

“No, Geraldine,
I want to speak with this gentleman outside. Please stay with Elise
while we find a quiet place to discuss the situation.”

“Yes, of course
I will, Julien.” Geraldine brushed past the visitor without
exchanging a word. Denis rose from his bedside seat and began to
protest.

“I have no
intention of…”

Julien walked
out of the room. It took a full two minutes for Denis to
follow.

“I gather your
name is Bernard. I want to keep this as civil as possible so let’s
find a table in the café.”