Prisoners of Tomorrow (82 page)

“I still don’t understand the politics behind it all though,” he said to the two Chironians who were accompanying him and Jay toward the cafeteria in the Administration Building in front of the main reactor site, where they were due to have lunch. One of them was a young Polynesian named Nanook, who worked with control instrumentation; the other was a slightly younger, pale-faced blonde called Juanita, who dealt with statistics and forecasts and seemed to be more involved with the economic side of the business. Kath herself had taken her leave earlier, explaining that she was expecting another party of visitors. Bernard spread his hands in an imploring gesture. “I mean . . . who owns the place? Who decides the policies for running it?”

The two Chironians frowned at each other. “Owns it?” Juanita repeated. Her voice suggested that the notion was a new one. “I’m not all that sure what you mean. The people who work here, I guess.”

“But who decides who works here? Who appoints them to their jobs?”

“They do. How could it be up to anyone else?”

“But that ridiculous! What’s to stop anyone walking in off the street from giving orders?”

“Nothing,” Juanita said. “But why would they? Who’d take any notice of them?”

“So how does anyone know who to listen to?” Jay asked, every bit as mystified as his father.

“They soon find out,” Juanita said it as if it explained everything.

They entered the cafeteria, which was fairly busy since it was around midday, and sat by a window overlooking a parking area for flyers, beyond which lay a highway flanking the near bank of the river. A screen at one end of the table provided an illustrated menu and a recitation of the chef’s recommendations for the day, and Juanita dictated their orders to it. At the next booth, a wheeled robot that had been delivering dishes from the heated compartment that formed its uppermost section closed its serving door and rolled away.

Bernard wasn’t getting through, he could see. “Take Kath as an example,” he said, turning toward Nanook. “A lot of people around here seem to accept her as . . . boss, for want of a better word . . . for a lot of things, anyhow.”

Nanook nodded. “Right. I do most of the time.”

“Because she knows what she’s talking about, right?” Bernard said.

“Sure. Why else?”

“So suppose someone else showed up who thought he knew just as much. What if half the people around here thought so too, and the others didn’t? Who decides? How would you resolve something like that?”

Nanook rubbed his chin and looked dubious. “That situation sounds very farfetched,” he said after a few seconds. “I can’t see how anyone else could walk in with the same experience. But if it did happen, and it was true . . . then I suppose Kath would have to agree with him. She’d be indebted by that amount. And that would decide it for everyone else.”

Bernard stared at him in open disbelief. “You’re not saying she’d simply back down? That’s crazy!”

“We all have to pay our debts,” Nanook said unhelpfully.

“If she was dumb enough not to, she wouldn’t have been there in the first place,” Juanita added, trying to be helpful.

That didn’t explain anything. Jay couldn’t see it either. “Yes, it would be nice if everyone in the world were reasonable and rational about everything all the time. But they can’t be, can they? Chironians have the same mix of genes as everyone else. There can’t be anything radically different.”

“I never said there was,” Nanook answered.

“So what about the nuts?” Jay asked. “What do you do about people who insist on being as unreasonable and obnoxious as they can, just for the hell of it?”

“We get them,” Nanook agreed. “But not a lot. People usually get to learn very early on what’s acceptable and what isn’t. They’ve all got eyes, ears, and brains.”

“But Jay’s still got a point,” Bernard said, glancing at his son and nodding “What about the people who won’t use them?”

“We don’t get a lot of those,” Nanook told them again. “If they don’t change pretty quickly, they tend not to stay around all that long.” Juanita looked from Bernard to Jay as if satisfied that everything was now clear. It wasn’t.

“Why? What happens with them?” Bernard asked.

Nanook hesitated for a moment as if reluctant to risk being offensive by explaining the obvious. He shrugged. “Well . . . usually somebody ends up shooting them,” he replied. “So it never gets to be a real problem.”

For a few seconds Bernard and Jay were too stunned to say anything. “But . . . that’s crazy,” Bernard protested at last. “You can’t just let everybody go round shooting anyone they don’t like.”

“What else can you do?” Juanita asked.

“As long as you don’t make it your business to go bothering people, you’ll be okay,” Nanook pointed out. “So it never affects most people. And when it happens . . . it happens.”

After a few seconds of silence Jay conceded, “Okay, I can see how it might be a good way of getting rid of the odd freak here and there. But what do you do when a whole bunch of them get together?”

“How can they when there are hardly any around to start with?” Juanita asked him. “We told you—if they’re like that, they don’t last very long.”

“And in any case, whatever would a bunch like that want to get together for?” Nanook asked.

Jay shrugged. “All the things crazy people usually follow crazy leaders for, I guess.”

“Like what?” Nanook asked.

Jay shrugged again. “Protection, maybe.”

“What from?”

A good point, Jay admitted to himself. “Security?” he tried. “To get rich . . . Whatever.”

“They’ve already got security,” Nanook declared. “And if they’re not rich enough already, how is some crazy supposed to help?”

Bernard threw up his hands in exasperation. “Well, hell, let’s say because they’re just plain crazy. They don’t need any reason. Never mind why, but let’s say it’s happened. What do you do?”

Nanook sighed heavily. “We have had one or two things like that from time to time,” he confessed. “But it never lasts. In the end a bigger bunch gets itself together and gets rid of them. It comes to the same thing—they end up getting shot anyhow.”

Jay looked worried, and Bernard appalled. “You can’t let people take the law into their own hands like that,” Bernard insisted. “Unchecked violence—mob rule—God alone knows what else. It’s plain uncivilized—barbaric. You’re going to have to change the system sooner or later.”

“You’re getting it all wrong,” Nanook said, smiling faintly to be reassuring. “It’s not so bad. Things like that don’t happen all the time—in fact, hardly ever. Just sometimes . . .”

Juanita saw the expressions on Bernard’s and Jay’s faces. “Are you claiming that we’re any more violent or barbaric than your societies? We’ve never had a war. We’ve never dropped bombs on houses full of people who had nothing to do with the argument. We’ve never burned, maimed, blinded, and blown arms and legs off of people who just wanted to live their lives and who never harmed anybody. We’ve never shot anyone who didn’t ask for it. Can you say the same? Okay, so the system’s not perfect. Is yours?”

“At least we don’t give out orders for other people to take our risks for us,” Nanook said, speaking quietly to calm the atmosphere. Juanita was starting to get emotional. “The people who take the risks are the ones who believe it’s worth it. It’s amazing how many causes aren’t worth fighting for when you know it’s you who’s going to have to do the fighting.” He shook his head slowly. “No, we don’t get too much of that kind of thing.”

“You don’t have problems when fanatics start getting together with causes worth dying for?” Jay asked.

Nanook shifted his eyes and shook his head again. “Fanatics are gullible fools. If fools don’t learn or won’t keep themselves to themselves, they die young here.”

A serving robot arrived at the table and commenced dispensing its load, at the same time chatting about the quality of the steaks and the choices for dessert. Bernard turned to stare out of the window and think. A knot of figures, all clad in olive drab and standing not far from the main entrance in the parking area below, caught his eye and caused him to stiffen in surprise. They were wearing uniforms—U.S. Army uniforms. Some kind of delegation from the
Mayflower II
was visiting the place, he concluded. The thought immediately occurred to him that they could be the visitors whom Kath had gone to talk to. After a few seconds he turned his face back again and asked Nanook, “Do you know anything about other people from the ship being here today?”

Nanook looked mildly surprised. “Sure. I thought you’d know about it. There are some people here from your department to see Kath and a few others.”

“My department?”

“Engineering. That’s the one you’re with, isn’t it?”

Bernard frowned suddenly. “Yes, it is. And I didn’t know about it.” His concern intensified as the implications sank in. “Who are they?”

“Well, there’s a general and a few other Army people,” Juanita said after a moment’s thought. “And from Engineering there’s a . . . Merrick—Leighton Merrick, that’s right.” She looked at Nanook. “And one called Walters, wasn’t there . . . and some other guy . . .”

“Hoskins,” Nanook supplied.

“Yes, Frank Hoskins,” Juanita said. “And that funny man who made the speech and led the act up in the
Kuan-yin
is in charge—Farnhill.”

Bernard’s concern changed to a deep, uneasy suspicion as he listened. Walters and Hoskins were his equals in rank and duties; this could only mean that he had been left out of something deliberately. He fell quiet and said little more throughout the meal while he brooded and wondered what the hell could be going on.

“I bet she does,” Stanislau maintained. “They all do. Carson made it last night with a chick at Canaveral.”

“Who says?” Driscoll demanded.

“He did. She’s got a place in the city—just across from the base.”

“Carson doesn’t know what to do with it,” Driscoll scoffed derisively. “He still thinks it’s for playing with.”

“I’m just telling you what the guy said.”

“Oh, in that case it just has to be true, doesn’t it. Now tell me that Swyley’s color-blind.”

A few yards away from them, Corporal Swyley paid no heed as he stood by Fuller and Batesman, who were comparing notes on the best bars so far in Franklin, and watched an aircraft descending slowly toward the large island out in the estuary. He couldn’t see any reason why travel shouldn’t come free on Chiron, just like everything else, and wondered what kinds of connections could be made from Port Norday to the more remote reaches of the planet. Interesting. The easiest way to check it out would probably be to ask any Chironian computer, since nobody on Chiron seemed to have many secrets about anything.

Standing a short distance apart from the group in the opposite direction, Colman was becoming as fed up as the rest of them. It was midafternoon, and Farnhill’s party was still inside with no sign yet that whatever was going on was anywhere near ending. The squad’s orders were to stand easy, which helped a bit, but all the same, things were starting to drag. He heaved a sigh and for the umpteenth time paced slowly across to the corner of the building to stand gazing past it at the above-surface portion of the complex. Behind him, Driscoll and Stanislau stopped talking about Carson’s sex life abruptly as two Chironians stopped by on their way to the main entrance.

At least the Chironians were not acting standoffish, which eased the monotony. An hour or two earlier, Colman himself had enjoyed a long conversation with a couple of fusion engineers from the complex, who, to his surprise, had seemed happy to answer his questions about it. They had even offered him a quick tour. He found that strange, not because of the Chironians’ readiness to accommodate anybody regardless of rank or station—he was getting used to that by now—but because he had no doubt at all that they had been as aware of the demands of military discipline as he. Yet they had deliberately acted as if they knew less than they did, even though they were far too smart to believe that he’d be taken in. The Chironians did it all the time. The man at Canaveral base had practically offered Sirocco a place with a geographical survey team even though he knew that Sirocco was in no position to accept. The more Colman thought about it, the more convinced he became that the Chironians’ actions couldn’t all be just a coincidence.

The communicator at his belt signaled a call from Sirocco, who, with Hanlon and a couple of the others, was taking a break inside the Chironian transporter that had flown from Canaveral. “How’s it going?” Sirocco inquired when Colman answered. “Are the troops mutinying yet?”

“Grumbling, but not too bad. Any news from inside?”

“Nothing yet. It’s about time you took a breather. I’ll be out in a few minutes to take a spell with Carson and Young. Tell Swyley and Driscoll to stand down with you. They’ve been out there the longest.”

“Will do. See you in a few minutes.”

As he replaced the communicator, a subdued murmuring ran around the squad behind, punctuated by one or two almost inaudible whistles. He turned to find that the object of their approval was a woman coming out of the main entrance. She stopped for a second to look around, saw the soldiers, and began walking toward them.

She was in her late thirties—evidently one of the Founders—and carried herself with a stately elegance that was proud and upright without crossing the boundary into haughtiness. Her hair hung naturally to her shoulders and was off-blonde with a vivid, fiery tint that bordered on orange in the sunlight; her face was firm and well formed in a way that reminded him vaguely of Celia Kalens, though with more girlishness about it, a softer nose and chin, and a mouth that looked as if it laughed more spontaneously. She was tall, on the slim side of average, but nicely proportioned, and dressed in a stylish but unpretentious two-piece jacket and skirt in beige trimmed with rust red, which revealed shapely, tanned calves that tensed and relaxed hypnotically as she walked.

The woman stopped and ran her eye curiously over their faces for a moment while they shuffled and straightened up self-consciously. “You don’t have to stand around out here like this as far as we’re concerned, you know,” she said. “You can come on inside if you want. How about a coffee, and maybe something to eat?” The faces turned instinctively toward Colman as he rejoined them.