The Night's Dawn Trilogy (278 page)

“We were trapped by history. Our ancestors modified their bodies to live in a Lunar gravity field before the ZTT drive was
built. They could have sent their children to settle countless terracompatible worlds, but then those children would have
needed geneering to adapt them back to the human ‘norm.’ Parent and child would have been parted at birth; they wouldn’t have
been descendants, just fosterlings in an alien environment. So we decided to make ourselves a world of our own.”

“If I have followed this discourse correctly,” Fletcher said. “You have spent five centuries turning Mars from a desert to
a garden?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you really so powerful that you can rival Our Lord’s handiwork?”

“I believe He only took seven days. We’ve got a long way to go yet before we equal that. Not that we’ll ever do it again.”

“Is the whole Lunar nation emigrating here now?” Louise asked, anxious to halt Fletcher’s queries. She had caught Endron giving
him puzzled glances at odd times during the voyage. It was something to watch out for; she was used to his naivete, thinking
little of it. Others were not so generous.

“That was the idea. But now it’s happened, the majority of those living in the Lunar cities are reluctant to leave. Those
who do come here to settle are mostly the younger generation. So the shift is very gradual.”

“Will you live on Mars once you’ve finished flying starships?”

“I was born in Phobos; I find skies unnatural. Two of my children live in Thoth city. I visit when I can, but I don’t think
I would fit in down there anyway. After all this time, our nation is finally beginning to change. Not very swiftly, but it’s
there, it’s happening.”

“How? How can communism change?”

“Money, of course. Now the terraforming project no longer absorbs every single fuseodollar earned by our state industries,
there is more cash starting to seep into the economy. The younger generation adore their imported AV blocks and MF albums
and clothes, they are placing so much value on these status symbols, ignoring our own nation’s products purely for the sake
of difference, which they see as originality. And they have a whole planet to range over; some of us actually worry that they
might walk off into the countryside and reject us totally. Who knows? Not that I’d mind if they do discard our tenets. After
all, it is their world. We built it so they could know its freedom. Trying to impose the old restrictions on them would be
the purest folly. Social evolution is vital if any ethnic-nationhood is to survive; and five centuries is a long time to remain
static.”

“So if people did claim land for themselves, you wouldn’t try to confiscate it back?”

“Confiscate? You say that with some malice. Is that what the Communists on your world say they’re going to do?”

“Yes, they want to redistribute Norfolk’s wealth fairly.”

“Well, tell them from me, it won’t work. All they’ll ever do is cause more strife if they try and change things now. You cannot
impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. The Lunar nation functions because it was planned that way
from the moment the cities gained independence from the companies. It’s the same concept as Norfolk, the difference being
your founders chose to write a pastoral constitution. Communism works here because everybody supports it, and the net allowed
us to eliminate most forms of corruption within the civil service and local governing councils that plagued most earlier attempts.
If people don’t like it, they leave rather than try and wreck it for everyone else. Isn’t that what happens on Norfolk?”

Louise thought back to what Carmitha had said. “It’s difficult for the Land Union people. Starflight is expensive.”

“I suppose so. We’re lucky here, the O’Neill Halo takes all our malcontents, some asteroids have entire low-gee levels populated
by Lunar ÉmigrÉs. Our government will even pay your ticket for you. Perhaps you should try that on Norfolk. The whole point
of the Confederation’s diversity is that it provides every kind of ethnic culture possible. There’s no real need for internal
conflict.”

“That’s a nice idea. I ought to mention it to Daddy when I get back. I’m sure a one-way starship ticket would be cheaper than
keeping someone at the arctic work camps.”

“Why tell your father? Why not campaign for it yourself?”

“Nobody would listen to me.”

“You won’t be your age forever.”

“I meant, because I’m a girl.”

Endron gave her a mystified frown. “I see. Perhaps that would be a better issue to campaign about. You’d have half of the
population on your side from day one.”

Louise managed an uncomfortable smile. She didn’t like having to defend her homeworld from sarcasm, people should show more
courtesy. The trouble was, she found it hard to defend some of Norfolk’s customs.

Endron took them to one of the lowest habitation levels, a broad service corridor which led away from the biosphere cavern,
deep into the asteroid’s interior. It was bare rock, with one wall made up from stacked layers of cable and piping. The floor
was slightly concave, and very smooth. Louise wondered how old it must be for people’s feet to have worn it down.

They reached a wide olive-green metal door, and Endron datavised a code at its processor. Nothing happened. He had to datavise
the code another two times before it opened. Louise didn’t dare risk a glance at Fletcher.

Inside was a cathedral-sized hall filled with three rows of high voltage electrical transformers. Great loops of thick black
cabling emerged from holes high up in the walls, stretching over the aisles in a complicated weave that linked them to the
fat grey ribbed cylinders. There was a strong tang of ozone in the air.

A flight of metal stairs pinned against the rear wall led up to a small maintenance manager’s office cut into the rock. Two
narrow windows looked down on the central aisle as they walked towards it, the outline of a man just visible inside. Fletcher’s
alarm at the power humming savagely all around them was clear in the sweat on his forehead and hands, his small, precisely
controlled steps.

The office had a large desk with a computer terminal nearly as primitive as the models Louise used on Norfolk. A large screen
took up most of the back wall, its lucidly coloured symbols displaying the settlement’s power grid.

There was a Martian waiting for them inside; a man with very long snow-white hair brushed back neatly and a bright orange
silk suit worn in conjunction with a midnight-black shirt. He carried a slim, featureless grey case in his left hand.

Faurax didn’t know what to make of his three new clients at all; if they hadn’t been with Endron he wouldn’t even have let
them into the office. These were not the times to dabble in his usual sidelines. Thanks to the current Confederation crisis,
the Phobos police were becoming quite unreasonable about security procedures.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said after Endron had introduced everybody. “Why haven’t you got your own passports?”

“We had to leave Norfolk very quickly,” Louise said. “The possessed were sweeping through the city. There was no time to apply
to the Foreign Office for passports. Although there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have been issued with them, we don’t have
criminal records or anything like that.”

It even sounded reasonable. And Faurax could guess the kind of financial package which the
Far Realm’s
crew would engineer concerning their passage. Nobody wanted questions at this stage.

“You must understand,” he said, “I had to undertake a considerable amount of research to obtain the Norfolk government’s authentication
codes.”

“How much?” Louise asked.

“Five thousand fuseodollars. Each.”

“Very well.”

She didn’t even sound surprised, let alone shocked. Which tweaked Faurax’s curiosity; he would have dearly liked to ask Endron
who she was. The call he’d got from Tilia setting up the meeting had been very sparse on detail.

“Good,” he said, and put his case on the desk, datavising a code at it. The upper surface flowed apart, revealing a couple
of processor blocks and several fleks. He picked up one of the fleks, which was embossed with a gold lion: Norfolk’s national
symbol. “Here we are. I loaded in all the information Tilia gave me; name, where you live, age, that kind of thing. All we
need now is an image and a full body biolectric scan.”

“What do we have to do?” Louise asked.

“First, I’m afraid, is the money.”

She gave a hollow laugh and took a Jovian Bank credit disk from her small shoulder bag. Once the money had been shunted over
to Faurax’s disk, he said: “Remember not to wear these clothes when you go through the Halo’s immigration. These images were
supposedly taken on Norfolk before you left, and the clothes are new. In fact, I’d advise dumping them altogether.”

“We’ll do that,” Louise said.

“Okay.” He slotted the first flek into his processor block and read the screen. “Genevieve Kavanagh?”

The little girl smiled brightly.

“Stand over there, dear, away from the door.”

She did as he asked, giving the sensor lens a solemn stare. After he’d got the visual image filed, he used the second processor
block to sweep her so he could record her biolectric pattern. Both files were loaded into her passport, encrypted with Norfolk’s
authentication code. “Don’t lose it,” he said and dropped the flek into her hand.

Louise was next. Faurax found himself wishing she were a Martian girl. She had a beautiful face, it was just her body which
was so alien.

Fletcher’s image went straight into his passport flek. Then Faurax ran the biolectric sensor over him. Frowned at the display.
Ran a second scan. It took a long time for his chilly disquiet to give way into full blown consternation. He gagged, head
jerking up from the block to stare at Fletcher. “You’re a—” His neural nanonics crashed, preventing him from datavising any
alarm. The air solidified in front of his eyes; he actually saw it flowing like a dense heat shiver, contracting into a ten
centimetre sphere. It hit him full in the face. He heard the bone in his nose break before he lost consciousness.

Genevieve squealed in shock as Faurax went crashing to the floor, blood flowing swiftly from his nose.

Endron looked at Fletcher in total shock, too numb to move. His neural nanonics had shut down, and the office light panel
was flickering in an epileptic rhythm. “Oh, my God. No! Not you.” He glanced at the door, gauging his chances.

“Do not try to run, sir,” Fletcher said sternly. “I will do whatever I must to protect these ladies.”

“Oh, Fletcher,” Louise groaned in dismay. “We were almost there.”

“His device exposed my nature, my lady. I could do naught else.”

Genevieve ran over to Fletcher and hugged him tightly around his waist. He patted her head lightly.

“Now what are we going to do?” Louise asked.

“Not you as well?” Endron bewailed.

“I’m not possessed,” she said with indignant heat.

“Then what. . . ?”

“Fletcher has been
protecting
us from the possessed. You don’t think I could stand against them by myself, do you?”

“But, he’s one of them.”

“One of whom, sir? Many men are murderers and brigands, does that make all of us so?”

“You can’t apply that argument. You’re a possessed. You’re the enemy.”

“Yet, sir, I do not consider myself to be your enemy. My only crime, so it sounds, is that I have died.”

“And come back! You have stolen that man’s body. Your kind want to do the same to mine and everyone else’s.”

“What would you have us do? I am not so valiant that I can resist this release from the torture of the beyond. Perhaps, sir,
you see such weakness as my true crime. If so, I plead guilty to that ignominy. Yet, know you this, I would grasp at such
an escape every time it is offered, though I know it to be the most immoral of thefts.”

“He saved us,” Genevieve protested hotly. “Quinn Dexter was going to do truly beastly things to me and Louise. Fletcher stopped
him. No one else could. He’s not a bad man; you shouldn’t say he is. And I won’t let you do anything horrid to him. I don’t
want him to have to go back there into the beyond.” She hugged Fletcher tighter.

“All right,” Endron said. “Maybe you’re not like the Capone Organization, or the ones on Lalonde. But I can’t let you walk
around here. This is my home, damn it. Maybe it is unfair, and unkind that you suffered in the beyond. You’re still a possessor,
nothing changes that. We are opposed, it’s fundamental to what we are.”

“Then you, sir, have a very pressing problem. For I am sworn to see these ladies to their destination in safety.”

“Wait,” Louise said. She turned to Endron. “Nothing has changed. We still wish to leave Phobos, and you know Fletcher is not
a danger to you or your people. You said so.”

Endron gestured at the crumpled form of Faurax. “I can’t,” he said desperately.

“If Fletcher opens your bodies to the souls in the beyond, who knows what the people who come through will be like,” Louise
said. “I don’t think they will be as restrained as Fletcher, not if the ones I’ve encountered are anything to judge by. You
would be the cause of Phobos falling to the possessed. Is that what you want?”

“What the hell do you think? You’ve backed me into a corner.”

“No we haven’t, there’s an easy way out of this, for all of us.”

“What?”

“Help us, of course. You can finish recording Fletcher’s passport for us, you can find a zero-tau pod for Faurax and keep
him in it until this is all over. And you’ll know for certain that we’ve gone and that your asteroid is safe.”

“This is insane. I don’t trust you, and you’d be bloody stupid to trust me.”

“Not really,” she said. “If you tell us you’ll do it, Fletcher will know if you’re telling us the truth. And once we’re gone
you still won’t change your mind, because you could never explain away what you’ve done to the police.”

“You can read minds?” Endron’s consternation had deepened.