Lightpaths (36 page)

“As of just yesterday we were able to tell them that these structures are definitely concerned with information and not destruction, and that they are being built by micromachines apparently under the control of our colony’s machine-intelligence networking system, the Variform Autonomous Joint Reasoning Activity—without colony approval and over human objections and counter commands. These answers have also proven unsatisfactory to our inquisitors on Earth—at least partially because they are determined to see a weapon in these structures. They further claim that, since VAJRA is supposed to be under our control, we are responsible for the construction of those objects and the threat they supposedly present.”

The presiding minister sighed wearily.

“Twelve hours ago, the United Nations and Corporate Presidium issued statements demanding that we immediately dismantle the disputed structures—and, if we fail to do so, threatened trade sanctions and possible military action ranging from blockade to invasion and UN/CP occupation of the habitat. We have sought to comply, but as soon as work teams attempted to dismantle one of the structures today, VAJRA precipitated a series of ‘crises’ in our intelligent systems—particularly those support systems on which this habitat is most dependent for its continued survival.

“Lakshmi Ngubo, the designer of VAJRA, along with the computing staff, is at this moment engaged in trying to correct the problem. The political situation, however, seems to be worsening very rapidly.”

In the floating projections the X-shaped structures disappeared and were replaced by video and trideo images of blue-black, single-stage-to-orbit military shuttles, preparing for launch.

“As you can see, we may soon be forcibly reminded of our connection with Earth. Four hours ago, what appears to be a combined multi-national, multi-corporate force of ten ships and four hundred astronaut-soldiers left the launching pads at Edwards, Tanegashima, Baikonur, Lop Nor, Guiana Bleu, and Windhoek. These spacecraft are currently in low Earth orbits but could hard-burn toward our position here at a moment’s notice. Those of you who follow Earth’s media know that in the last few hours they’ve begun making most warlike noises, speculating that a ‘colonial rebellion’ is underway—even though we’ve been at constant pains to deny such rumors.

“To make matters even more critical, a number of HOME consortium members are among those corporations helping to loft this expeditionary force. Things seem to be strained up to their topmost height, so I think it’s appropriate that the council should hear from all the people of the community, residents and visitors, as to what our course of action should be now.”

So saying, Clara Schulman, this quarter’s Presiding Minister, opened the floor up for questions and discussion as a buzz and murmur permeated the audience. As she listened to the flurry of bewildered queries and stark pronouncements that ensued, Marissa found that the shrillest of the speakers were the visitors, who like herself seemed much more concerned by these developments than the permanent residents. Odd, she thought, that those who might have been thought to have more at stake would turn out to be calmer and more prepared for this eventuality.

The first several speakers all expressed bewilderment at finding themselves “hostages of our own machine,” as one of them put it. All urged that Lakshmi Ngubo correct the VAJRA difficulties as quickly as possible. Several questions were addressed to the resident HOME representative, Mr. Fanon, and—though these queries were surprisingly without rancor, given the situation—the interrogation left the young man dazed and confused. Apparently he was being kept as much in the dark about external affairs as any other resident—probably because he was a resident, and therefore a “security risk” to HOME’s member conglomerates.

Discussion only really got going, however, when a visitor, a woman named Ekwefi Muwakil, suggested that the whole brouhaha, even the actions by the UN and the CP, really had almost nothing to do with the strange X-shaped objects.

“Can’t you see it’s just a ploy?” she asked shrilly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if HOME’s corporate security were behind the VAJRA malfunction and the building of those things! It’s a set-up. Doesn’t it seem a little bit too coincidental to you that this should be happening just now, when the new habitats are about to take in their first settlers, when the opening up of the asteroid frontier for metals and carbon chondrites is about to make this habitat far more self-sufficient? Doesn’t it seem a little too pat that—just when it’s starting to look like these space habitats really might work—the nations and corporations have drummed up an excuse for taking over? It’s just as I suspected: if this new idea of space habitation proved out, the powers-that-be would co-opt it for themselves, like every other new idea. An executive escape-pod, a lifeboat for the power-elite while the Good Ship Earth goes down—that was their plan all along! And I’m sure this four hundred member occupation force has always been a part of that plan!”

Whether Ms. Muwakil was right or not in believing nations and corporations on Earth had some sort of long-range takeover plan, Marissa could by no means say. The converse possibility, though—that the habitat’s residents had already given some thought to contingency plans of their own—was clearly in evidence as she watched the discussion. Marissa listened carefully as consensus quickly developed around a proposed two-part plan of action.

The first part, the filing of a formal protest against the UN/CP positioning of troops in space, was quickly adopted because it was in the colony council’s powers to issue such a protest. Preparations for a civilian-based NonViolent Direct Resistance (NVDR) defense—the second part of the plan—would, upon colony council approval, have to be taken by the colony council representatives back to their home community councils, and from there to the people in each community-century for approval and action. Such a process sounded slow to Marissa, but if consensus could be achieved as quickly at all levels as it had been in the colony council today, then there could be no doubt that the colony could operate democratically even in such a crisis as that which now faced the space habitat.

“Having accomplished the work on the agenda,” the council’s Presiding Minister said at last, “let’s give another moment to silence, and through that silence round off the council’s proceedings. Let us find in the silence the strength, courage, and resolution we’ll need to act upon the decisions we’ve made today and see all our actions through to a peaceful and just conclusion.”

Marissa closed her eyes in the silence this time, finding as she did so that falling into the quiet darkness was somehow as pleasant as floating in a sunlit pool of cool water. Whatever tensions the meeting may have generated in her now dissipated into the quiet darkness, fell away and were gone. When the sounds of conversations and scraping chairs and bustling activity told her that the quiet contemplative time was over, Marissa opened her eyes to look upon the world with renewed vigor and determination.

Rejoining Atsuko near the dais, Marissa found her mentor getting final reminders from Lev Korchnoi about curtain time for the Möbius Cadúceus show.

“As soon as I got the go-ahead from the council,” Lev was saying, “I went ahead and called the crew to help me finish the final setup for the show. If you want to see some of that, follow me.”

Atsuko and Marissa agreed and followed Lev out of the pavilion in the direction of the reflecting pool. The council’s discussions and the colony’s dire situation were, seemingly, past and forgotten but for Lev’s rather laconic statement that he hoped “this thing with Earth” didn’t blow up and ruin the concert and the other parts of the celebrations scheduled for that evening.

“Here they are,” Lev said when they’d reached the edge of the reflecting pool, pointing toward two impressively large machine assemblages, one of which was already being lowered by crane into the waters of the pool. “My temple guardians.”

“What are they?” Atsuko asked, noting groups of curious onlookers, Seiji Yamaguchi among them—already beginning to gather. “What do they do?”

“Everything!” Lev said proudly, climbing with considerable agility into a cranny about a quarter of the way up the nearer mechanism, a towering crystalline megalith studded with weapons blisters and looming above them like a dumb god of hulking metal. “Each one’s a sort of self-consuming theatrical robot. My own computer-aided designs, you know—though the ideas are old. I’ve taken the monsters Scylla and Charybdis from the ancient Western myths and tried to blend them with the Shut-Mouthed Fear and Open-Mouthed Desire demons found at the entrance to some Buddhist shrines. The result is that this machine is my Rock of Fear, and that”—he pointed to the other mechanism, the squatter companion piece, just at the very moment the crane deposited it into the water with a loud splash—“that is my Whirlpool of Desire. Together they make up the difficult passage Our Hero must navigate.”

Seeing the crane turning its attention toward the second machine, Lev climbed down from his Scylla and walked toward Atsuko and Marissa with the careful physical control of a natural athlete or veteran dancer.

“Are they safe?” asked Seiji Yamaguchi, who had moved to the front of one small crowd of onlookers.

“Completely,” Lev assured him, though Marissa quickly realized the tall pale man was speaking as much for Atsuko’s benefit as for Seiji’s. “All just bells and whistles and special effects. Even the ‘bombs’ will only be noise and a little smoke, sulfur, carbon dioxide and occasional methane—all well within environmental standards. Just stage combat and choreography and acrobatics. I doubt the shuttlecraft troopers down in low orbit can say as much.”

Seiji’s datadisplay began to chime and show a message.

“Gotta go,” Seiji said with a puzzled frown, taking his leave. “Lakshmi wants to see Jhana and me up at her workshop. Top priority. Any suggestions as to where Ms. Meniskos might be about this time of day?”

“You might try Cryonics or Cryogenetics,” Atsuko remarked. “Paul Larkin’s lab.”

“I was thinking of looking there myself,” Seiji said with a nod. “I keep trying to get Larkin to go up with me to Lakshmi’s place, but he refuses. Hates micro-gee, he says.” Seiji turned to shake Lev’s hand. “I hope the show goes well, Lev.”

“Thanks. Say hello to Lakshmi for me.”

“I will,” Seiji said, striding quickly away. In the reflecting pool, the crane was settling Lev’s Scylla mechanism into place.

* * * * * * *

Roger was over-tired and exhilarated to the edge of dizziness. He had worked diligently all morning and into the afternoon to at last produce a complete sample of his pheromonal perfume, and soon, very soon, he would test its effects. He had already cleared most of the furniture out of one of the lab lounges and put down thick mats. After attending some colony political function (God only knew why), Marissa was already in the lab, supposedly at the moment pumping out, under the most rigorous safety controls, her first prototype culture of that immortalizing viral vector she’d been working on. Jhana too was due soon. Visions of the two of them going at each other—voluptuous pale redhead versus wiry dark brunette—and of himself at last nobly stepping in to break them up (though not too quickly, not too soon) flickered in his head.

The thought occurred to Roger, though, that if the perfume he’d developed worked as planned, stepping in between them might be dangerous. Conceding it best to be on the safe side, he headed over to his office desk and, opening the bottom drawer where it was buried beneath some papers, took out the one item from his weapon collection that he’d been able to smuggle up here: a Sig/Sauer Laserwire Dirk—mostly dark plastic, and at the moment broken down into three parts. He quickly re-assembled the short-range (one-third meter) beam weapon, clicked in its coiled snapwire and battery pack, and dropped the small, unprepossessing weapon into one of his white lab coat’s large pockets.

Roger felt ready to take on the world now—ready to celebrate his impending Great Achievement. His hand strayed onto the small plastic bag of
Cordyceps jacintae
still sitting on his desk from when he’d returned to the lab after his jaunt to see Larkin. He had scanned enough of the literature Paul and Seiji had given him on the mushroom to be able to figure out the dosages for certain desired effects. A one gram piece of the mushroom, for instance, would open up the reducing valve of the dorsal and median raphe nuclei enough to allow heightened sensitivity to and awareness of visual and auditory stimuli, an increased libidinal and sensual response....

He took a small specimen out of the bag and stared at it. Certainly the test he was about to run on his perfume, with Jhana and Marissa’s not-quite-fully-informed participation, would be something worth experiencing in a state of heightened sensory awareness—and worth remembering from that heightened state! If he didn’t like the effect and didn’t want the fungus colonizing his central nervous system, he could always have its spawn eliminated through fungicidal antibiotics later.

Why not? he thought—and so thinking he popped a couple of the small mushrooms into his mouth and chewed them slowly, deliberately. Unaccustomed as he was to eating uncooked mushrooms, he nonetheless found them surprisingly tasty, possessing only the slightest trace of any bitter or alkaloidal tang.

Now he was truly ready. A vision of a future—the future he was today creating—sprang into his head, unassisted by the mushroom and its various adaptogenic substances. He wouldn’t be feeling the effects of the mushroom for at least fifteen minutes. No, this vision was all his own.

He saw a future where underground malls were all the rage—the first step toward a Sandman burrow, a human version of the naked mole-rat colony structure. He foresaw a shift in styles, more unisex overall, everyone’s nails all filed sharp like digging claws, their hair cropped close and tight. People who moved in unison, a part of the great “we,” the invincible “us,” a eusocial super-organism capable of surviving in areas where a single individual or a pair of such Sandfolk could not. A society whose queen ruled with an absoluteness and efficiency never before seen, whose courtiers unhesitatingly defended the status quo with gun and uniform and mind, whose workers were ever diligent and productive and content with their lot. A future where only the rich could afford
Tombé
in significant quantities—
Tombé
that would make men crane their necks and bend other women’s wills to the wearer’s own;
Tombé
that would ensure chemical control over those who had less or none of it, suppressing reproduction by them, guaranteeing an unconscious obedience, an almost instinctual subservience, from them;
Tombé
that would be deep power, such that the more
Tombé
one owned, the more power one would have. Soon only the rich would have children, not because the poor would have made a “free will choice not to have them” (as these cislunatic idealists up here might phrase it) but because
Tombé
would be something only the rich could afford. But most importantly,
Tombé
would eliminate all need for his own pathology of secrecy, perhaps even the pathology of secrecy on which all human culture was built—