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Authors: Ken MacLeod

BOOK: Divisions
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My suit ate it, and played the messages over my eyes.
‘You are in deep trouble, Ellen May Ngwethu,’ the first message began, without preliminary. The face of Sylvester Tatsuro, current chairman of the Command Committee, frowned upon me. ‘The Research Committee has just passed a vote of no confidence in you, so you’re no longer our liaison with the social admin. They’ve asked us to divert a clipper to Lagrange to pick up a representative of the Solar Council, no less, who will be heading out here to investigate personally what’s been going on. There’s a lot of concern about our possible intentions.’ He allowed himself a brief smile. ‘Which no one outside the Division knows yet. Our self-discipline has held the line,
so far
. But the Earth Defence bodies are indulging their usual jealous pique towards us, and arousing all kinds of suspicions. Fortunately they have the wrong end of the stick entirely, in that they’re hinting that we’ve become appeasers! Apparently your clumsy extraction of Malley has caused something of a sensation, and various people who saw you talking to Wilde have been speculating in public. Naturally, the genuine appeasers are making a big thing of this, suggesting that we’ve seen sense at last and are about to open contact with the Jovians. I’ve put out a communiqué saying that’s the last thing we’ll consider, and that our vigilance remains as high as ever.’ Another quick smile. ‘I didn’t see my way clear yet to point out that we’re on a
higher
alert than ever. And just to wrap up, Ellen, all this talk has aroused interest in Jupiter, and one or two astronomers on Farside have
been jolted out of their routine rut and are looking closely at the planet for the first time in decades. They’ve already noticed some … oddities.
‘You have, in short, stirred up a hornets’ nest. We’re all giving you covering fire, of course, but when you arrive you’ll have some explaining to do. I don’t expect any reply to this message, by the way. Be seeing you, comrade.’
There was a pause of perhaps a second before the image closed down. In that moment, Tatsuro’s head inclined in what could have been a nod, his eyelid flickered in what could have been a wink.
Weeks ago, we had come to a private agreement on what to do, if the worst came to the worst: Plan B. It was something we dared not talk about; even thinking about it made me uneasy. But whatever my mistakes, Tatsuro needed me to carry it out. He would defend me against accusations—give, as he’d said, covering fire.
That I still had his confidence was the only comfort I could draw. The rest of the message left me uncomfortable and indignant. I held off from allowing myself any further reaction and let the suit play the next message.
It was from Carla, of the Thames river patrol. The view was of her sitting in a small room, with screens and papers lying around.
‘Message to Ellen May Ngwethu on the
Terrible Beauty
,’ she began, awkwardly. ‘Uh, Ellen, I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but hey, you seemed pretty sound. I’ve found out why you didn’t get a response to your calls for assistance from Alexandra Port. There were a couple of neighbours from Earth Defence around there just about the same time, warning about some radio communications going on among the non-cos, and the possibility of Jovian viruses leaking through. Well, we all saw that the non-cos were using radios, and it turns out that Alexandra Port and the river patrol and so on had all had an emergency shut-down when all that radio babble started, just in case.
‘The Earth Defence chaps have been talking to our committee, and it seems they were investigating that man you picked up, Dr Malley. They were waiting to see what he would do, and I have to say they were not best pleased when
Terrible Beauty
suddenly swooped down and carried him off. They’re kicking up a bit of a stink about it, and it’s all over the discussion tubes back here.’
She stopped and sighed. ‘To tell you the truth, Ellen, they’re saying Malley and the Division have been in cahoots for some time, and that all those radios the non-cos were using so carelessly were encouraged by Malley—and yourselves—as part of some scheme to try out the effects of people picking up Jovian communications—
testing
them on the poor non-cos, rather than on our own people. You can imagine what a fuss that’s causing.’
I could, all right.
‘Well,’ Carla concluded, ‘I’ll have to leave it at that. I’m sure it’s all some
big misunderstanding, so it’s over to you now. All the best.’ She gave a rather forced smile and I saw her hand reaching forward to switch the recorder off.
Yeng’s concerned face came into view as the virtual image faded out. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, standing up.
‘It’s not any … personal bad news, is it?’
I smiled and put my arm around her shoulders. ‘No, Yeng, it’s nothing like that. Just a little political problem, is all.’
After a watchful moment she turned back to her screen. I stood looking at her back, and at the equally oblivious Malley, for a few seconds, then I sought out Tony. He was lounging on one of the side benches in the commissary, reading a book—I could see his eyes saccade, scanning the invisible page. He blinked it away as he heard my approaching steps, and raised his eyebrows. By way of reply I inclined my head slightly towards the corner table, where Boris was talking to Suze, over a rapidly emptying bottle of ice-clouded vodka and a couple of glasses. He was matching her sips with gulps.
Tony gave me a small nod, flashed five fingers and returned to his book. I picked up a coffee and climbed up the stairwell, past the command deck to the sleeping gallery, and into my room. Five minutes later, as signalled, Tony followed. He tapped on the hatch and ducked in, and sat down in front of me on the spread quilt of my outer suit.
‘Still going for the mumsy look, I see,’ he remarked. ‘Mmm, I don’t know if I can contain my lust.’
‘You’d better,’ I said. ‘There’s something under all this that seems to be containing
me
—’
‘Oh, stop it … anyway, Ellen, I don’t suppose you asked me here to tear it off you, so …’
He listened to my summary of the two messages. Then he lay back and stared up at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head.
‘I think we’ve been set up,’ he said. ‘The Earth Defence … comrades … are probably trying to muscle in on our patch.
They
don’t think we’re going for appeasement, no way, nor that we’re doing
human experiments
on the non-cos. They think we have some kind of plan to win the war while nobody’s looking, take all the credit, declare the Solar System up for grabs, and grab a big chunk of it ourselves.’
I stared at him. ‘Earth Defence think
we
are tooling up for a … what, a counter-revolution? Dissolving the Solar Union? That’s crazy.’
‘It’s part of their job to worry about that sort of thing,’ Tony said.
‘All right, I’ll take your judgement on that one. But what I most want to ask you—’
‘Yes?’
‘—is what you’ve found out about our little sweetie.’
‘Ah, modesty forbids,’ Tony said gallantly. ‘But apart from that: she’s basically just a nice girl. She’s grown up in the Union, and she can’t really imagine anything different. Because all the conflicts she’s ever actually been in
have
been settled by discussion, literally around a table.’
He sighed. ‘Passionate global debates about what species to bring back this year. It’s a bit … disorienting, talking to someone so young. It’s been a long time since I gave anyone the third degree, and I wasn’t giving her anything like that—’
He smiled, looking somewhere else.
‘Notwithstanding any screams you may have heard.’
‘Do lay off. You think she’s clear?’
‘Yes. I’d say she’s just a nice, normal girl who doesn’t know how tough life can be. The youth of today, eh?’
‘There is one thing she’s … hard about,’ I said. ‘She wants the virus blanketing to stop. She wants expansion.’
‘She told you that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I guessed.’
‘Well, you guessed right. She told me she’s really excited about New Mars.’
‘So is Sam Malley,’ I said. ‘And he did tell me that. Maybe if what Suze really wants, deep down, is an end to the standoff, then—’
‘She might be winnable on our way of ending it, if it comes to that?’
‘Yes. And she might have an influence on how Malley sees it, especially if—well, they do have a lot in common.’
Tony stared at me, the bioluminescence sending bands of light down his face. ‘You are incorrigible, Ellen.’
I shrugged. ‘I must admit he’s looking and smelling better every day—’
‘You really do owe me one if I lose Suze’s sweet young body to that old reactionary.’
‘If you insist.’
‘Anyway,’ he added a minute later, ‘we can’t have the gang thinking we’re having a secretive discussion, or something.’
‘No,’ I agreed, trying to find the release-spot for the most impenetrable of the suit’s inner layers. ‘People might talk.’
 
 
That evening I sought out Suze after dinner, and settled down with her in a corner.
‘Interesting conversation with Boris?’
Her glance shone. ‘He’s amazing! An actual Sheenisov veteran! I’ve never met one of them before. It’s like … history talking to you.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it isn’t always reliable history. Boris’s memories may have got a bit screwed up along the way.’
(This was the charitable interpretation.)
‘What! No tribes of folks with two heads? No yetis? No lost legions of reanimated US/UN casualties?’ She smiled.
‘I’m afraid not. Not as he describes them, anyway. There
were
weird things on the steppe and in the European forests, and hallucinogen weapons were among them. That, we know for sure, so we can’t be too sure about the rest.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Suze said, sounding regretful. ‘Anyway.’ She peered at me from under her brow. ‘You didn’t come to talk about the battle of democracy. You came to talk about the battle that’s coming up.’
‘That’s true,’ I admitted. ‘I’m sorry to be so—’
‘It’s all right,’ Suze said. ‘I’ve had these conversations in the past. You say something
way
out of line, and nothing will happen except folks will argue, maybe, but sure as nature you’ll find one of the old comrades dropping by for a friendly chat to put you straight.’
‘I’m not one of the old comrades!’
‘Oh, but you are,’ Suze said. ‘I’d know that look anywhere. Tolerance that comes from total confidence that you’re right.’
I had to smile and nod and shrug to this, because I knew that look myself; even if I’d never recognized it in the mirror.
‘OK, Suze, the fact is—we
have
to win. They’ve been plaguing us, we’ve been zapping them, for centuries. Nobody has ever said we shouldn’t be doing it. This is just … finishing the job.’
Suze looked troubled. ‘Yes, but it’s so final! Everything will change.’
I nodded briskly. ‘That’s right. But if we don’t, everything will change, but for the worse. This way, things will change for the better. We’ll be able to expand properly at last. And we have to. Have you
seen
how many kids people are having?’
Suze smiled wryly. ‘Yeah. But what you’re proposing reminds me of … things I’ve read about, from the old time.
Lebensraum
. Manifest Destiny. All that.’
I almost regretted coming (almost) clean with her and Malley. But this kind of argument would have to be had, and soon, with everybody. When the Solar Council representative arrived, he or she would not be fooled, and would tell everybody. Then the water would hit the fuel-rods in a big way.
‘It isn’t like that, Suze,’ I said. ‘Honestly. The Outwarders—the Jovians aren’t people. They’re nothing like people. They’re just smart computer viruses, and this is our chance to wipe the disk for good. And if we don’t take that chance—’ I hesitated here, because this was the core of the Division’s morale, our Central Dogma, and it didn’t go over well with folk who’d
led more sheltered lives ‘—they’ll destroy us, or use us, as soon as
they
get the chance. It’s them or us.’
Suze looked thoughtful. ‘OK, I can see that,’ she said. ‘I try to imagine my mind being taken over, like happened to the old computers back in the Crash, and—’ She shuddered. ‘I’d do anything to prevent that. I’d rather die.’
‘Good on you,’ I said. ‘But it won’t come to that, because we’d rather
kill
.’
‘But you’ll try to talk first? As you promised?’
And as our own chairman had almost promised we wouldn’t.
‘Of course,’ I said.
Our conversation moved on to less weighty subjects, and when we parted after a few drinks I was fairly sure that the tried and tested technique of the friendly chat from one of the old comrades still had a lot to be said for it.
‘It’s funny,’ Suze said. ‘I always imagined Jupiter from Callisto would fill half the sky, and that everything else would be dark.’
‘You’re getting blasé, girl,’ I told her. ‘Jupiter’s more than a million miles away, and it still looks big enough to me.’
It was 08.48 GMT on the tenth day. We were in a low orbit around Callisto, its surface of cratered ice with its characteristic appearance of pelletstruck glass. Valhalla’s bull’s-eye shock-rings slid by below us, giant Jove rose above the horizon in front of us. On both bodies the works of mind were evident: the honeycomb upwellings of the Jovian hive, still monstrous to my eyes after two centuries; on Callisto the bright green-and-gold bubbles of the equatorial crater villages, the dark towers of the defence-lasers, the long white lines of the mass-driver tracks along which blocks of ice were hurtled into space. Callisto has four times more water in its icy crust than Earth has in all its oceans; slingshot around Jupiter, those blocks of ice were sent on slow transfer orbits to the Inner System—the water we’d picked up in Earth orbit had come all the way from here, and it was
still
worth doing; far more efficient than hauling water up Earth’s deep gravity-well or scraping frost from Luna’s polar shadows.
Between this outermost of Jupiter’s major moons and the planet itself was the ring: the near edge showing at this angle and distance as unbelievably sparse lights, which, as the eye took in the longer view, combined to form what seemed a solid crescent band of white. The sun was still recognizably
the sun, but its light was just bright enough to look like broad daylight, not so bright it dazzled and burned; much more natural than it looks from Earth.
‘Everybody strap in!’ yelled Andrea. ‘Braking in two minutes!’
We launched ourselves away from the wide CCTV screen and towards the couches. I strapped in and reached out for the still-floundering Suze, and pushed her gently to her place. She wallowed, grabbed, and turned. Malley had stayed strapped in throughout our minutes in free fall. His eyelids were closed tight, their compression forming the only wrinkles in his rejuvenated face. He and Suze were now on a par, physiologically, but his reflexes, the habits and expectations of his nervous system, remained those of a man who’d lived two hundred and sixty years in the same one gravity. Suze, with less to unlearn, was adapting quicker.
‘Braking burn in ten, nine, eight …’
There was no real need for a countdown, but Andrea too had old habits. The deceleration this time was shorter and less severe than the acceleration from Earth.
Terrible Beauty
came down and settled into its landing cradle like a well-caught egg. The silence left by the sudden absence of the unheard note of the drive was filled with ominous creaking noises.
‘Water melts under the torch,’ I told Suze and Malley. ‘That’s it refreezing. The cradle we’re resting on has legs that go deep into the ice, so we’re quite safe.’
We all stood up and grinned at each other and bounced around a bit in the low gravity, shouting and caromming off each other and generally acting as if a weight had just been taken off us, which it had. Suze and Malley stared at us and made cautious, experimental little hops.
‘It’s good to be home,’ I said, passing out air-tanks like bottles of champagne. I clapped mine to the front of my suit and the suit’s surface flowed around it.
‘That’s all there is to it?’ Malley asked.
I nodded, guiding them through the equally rapid and simple processes of making the suits vacuum-ready. My own suit absorbed some of its more exuberant embellishments as it shrank to fit. I could feel the inner layers flowing away from their nightwear images to a more functional chin-to-toe insulating one-piece. I pulled the hood over my head and murmured, ‘Helmet up.’
‘You look very funny,’ Suze said. She looked around. ‘I guess we all do.’
‘It’s practical,’ I said. ‘The colours make you more visible out on the surface. In accidents and emergencies, that can save your life.’
‘Yeah,’ said Malley, gesturing at his magenta carapace. ‘You wouldn’t want to be seen dead in it.’
We made our way to the airlock and went through in pairs to a lift-platform cranked up by the landing cradle. I took Suze through with me
and as we waited for the others she gazed around at the landing-field. We were a hundred feet above the surface, and had a good view of miles of flat and dirty ice, dozens of gantries and landing cradles, scores of crawling vehicles, and hundreds of people in their bright suits, looking from this height like an anomalous species of idiosyncratic, multicoloured ants. One of Valhalla’s ring-walls marked the horizon. Ice-blocks from a distant mass-driver soared overhead like meteors going the wrong way at a rate of about one a minute.
I felt, as always on returning here, a sense of homecoming, literally light-headed at being safely back and only minutes away from the warm human tumult of the ice-caverns, and an absurd gratitude to the godless, mindless forces that had placed this precious oasis of water so conveniently within the reach of man. The first wave of space-settlers had a saying, something between a litany and a running joke, which went: ‘If God had meant us to go into space, he’d have given us the Moon; if he’d meant us to terraform, he’d have given us Mars; if he’d meant us to mine asteroids, he’d have given us the Belt; if he’d meant us to colonize, he’d have given us Callisto.’ And so on. The details, and the name and gender of the deity allegedly responsible varied, but the message was the same. There were even attempts to reformulate it in more philosophically correct terms, as a special case of the anthropic principle, but they always struck me as rather forced.
If there was, as almost everybody now thought, no God, then all one could honestly say was that the human race was just unbelievably lucky. There had to be some winner of the cosmic lottery, some species which every chance event, from the passing of the dinosaurs to the coming of the ice, had worked to bring about, and then to light the fire of reason; and on whose birth as a space-going people the configuration of the planets had been favourable, and the stars themselves had smiled: the true horoscope of our real destiny, infinitely greater than anything imagined in the petty prognostications of astrology.
Other life was certain: the Solar System was dusty with organics, and on extra-solar planets our best telescopes could see the biospheres; Wilde’s reported New Mars had multicellular organisms, fossil beds and coal. Other minds there might be; but the great silence of the sky spoke with an unanswerable unanimity. Whatever triumphs these other minds had attained, radio communication and space travel were not among them. The stars were ours alone.
I looked out over the busy, cluttered, cheerful scene of the landing field, watching as a covered walkway to the nearest tunnel mouth rolled itself out towards us. Two by two the others joined me, leaning on the platform’s
guardrail, silent in their own thoughts. My helmet’s newly built laser-link buzzed.
‘This is a bleak place,’ said Suze.
 
 
We travelled from the landing field by descending elevator and rapid tunnel-train to the Division HQ at Valhalla base, six miles from the field and a mile under the ice. The elevator’s descent was for much of the way a free fall, with only a gradual deceleration at the lower end. The tunnel-train, likewise, was able to coast for most of its journey on blades like skates, running in channels of perpetually melted and refrozen ice. On the way, Malley asked about ice-quakes; I told him Callisto was the most stable of the major moons. He didn’t look reassured. All those recent-looking craters can give the wrong impression.
The Division HQ was a warren of tunnels and chambers lined with a spray-on insulation which smelled faintly of tar and which was coloured according to a scheme so complex that it had been abandoned as soon as it was implemented. We stood outside the inner door of the main airlock while our helmets scrolled down. The air was cool, carrying more of the smell of humans and machines, and less of plants and recyclers, than that of the ship. The distant vibration of air-pumps could be heard, and felt through the floor.
Ahead of us a hundred yards of bright-lit yellow corridor extended to a junction with a blue corridor. Along that corridor people passed every few seconds, in the familiar low-gee stride known as the ‘lunar lope.’ To allow for the upper part of the lope’s trajectory, the corridor roofs were never lower than about nine feet high.
‘No guards?’ Malley asked. ‘No reception?’
‘We don’t—’ began Suze; was stopped by Malley’s gesture and smile.
‘OK, OK.’
The crew members were all changing their suits into low-gee styles. Suze let her suit revert to the default fatigues and pack. I went for blue fake-leather trousers and top, a crinkly transparent blouson, and a shoulder-bag. Malley surprised me, and possibly himself, with a Medieval-scholar ensemble of leggings, breeches, tunic and cloak with a lot of black fur.
I led the way along the corridor, turned left, then along until the blue changed to a red-and-white tiling, looked at the hand-lettered sign tacked to the wall, turned right at the next junction and stopped at the door of the newly hacked emergency meeting-room. Here, at least, there was a guard, a man in heavy armour, armed with a couple of pistols and a light machine gun. He recognized me and nodded.
‘We’re expected,’ I said.
I knocked and went in. Expected we might be, but those present were busy at their tasks, and it took a few minutes before a meeting could be convened around the table that occupied the first section of the big room. It was a long table, eighteen feet by six, and it had about twenty chairs around it. The part of the room it occupied was tacky with fresh insulation. Behind it was a display screen and a cluster of terminals, and behind that a bank of medium-scale babbages whose gentle clicking and whirring filled any silences. About a dozen people were working among them, looking somewhat harassed: as members of the Command Committee, principles notwithstanding, they didn’t have much recent experience of such low-level tasks. The far end of the room abutted on raw ice, and dozens of robots were working at extending the room, melting the ice face, draining off the water, filtering out the organics, uncoiling cables and power lines into freshly melted ducts and applying insulation behind the advancing front of their activity. Beneath the insulation, the new stuff in the walls would eventually freeze into place.
Sylvester Tatsuro was the first to look up from the babbage which he was laboriously programming and come over to greet us. He was a small and stocky man, with receding black hair which he’d never bothered to replace, and narrow dark eyes. He was wearing a sort of belted robe in green fur. His sleeves were studded with display-units, and he had a small control bank hung from a strap around his neck.
He shook hands with Malley, nodded at Suze, and turned to me.
‘Why is she here?’
‘I want her here,’ I said. ‘Voice but not vote, obviously. I met her by chance, but she’s been helpful, and I think she has a point of view which may be useful for us to hear.’
Tatsuro shrugged. ‘She’s your responsibility,’ he said. ‘If you wish to retain her as an adviser, that’s fine.’
‘I’ve joined the Division,’ Suze said.
‘Welcome, comrade,’ said Tatsuro. ‘But on this committee, you’re strictly an adviser. You may leave whenever you wish, but no unauthorized communication outside the Division is permitted. Any such will be noticed at once, and action taken.’ He smiled briefly. ‘I sound like a cop from the old time reading your rights—but I’m sure you understand why this rule is necessary.’
‘Of course, neighbour,’ Suze said. ‘I understand. I feel very proud to be here.’
‘Good,’ said Tatsuro, smiling with every appearance of sincerity. ‘As to the rest of your gang—’ he added, speaking to me.
‘My crew stays,’ I said.
After a moment of eye-lock, he nodded.
‘What’s going on here?’ Malley asked, indicating the far end of the room.
Tatsuro glanced around. ‘We’re setting up the information filters for the
return data from the probes that are due to enter the Jovian atmosphere in a few hours,’ he said. ‘Naturally most of the detailed processing will be done by our scientific teams, but we get the first look. The first chance to make sure there are no mind-viruses present.’ He smiled thinly. ‘One of the privileges of our position.’
‘Spoken like a good socialist,’ said Malley.
Tatsuro responded with a half-smile and a shrug, as if he didn’t want to argue, and rapped loudly on the table.
‘Gather round, comrades,’ he called out gruffly. ‘That stuff can wait.’
One by one the other committee members left off what they were doing and made their way to the table. I indicated to the other crew members that they should spread out among the committee rather than sit in a group, and I myself sat down between Malley and Suze, with Tatsuro at right angles to me, not across. I was not going to give him even the slight advantage of sitting opposite me, if he wanted to make this a confrontation over my actions back on Earth.
It seemed he didn’t. The first item on the agenda was, of course, us; but the committee—all familiar faces, some old friends—listened to my summary account with only a few questions. It was when I mentioned my agreement with Malley that the frowning and muttering began.

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