Текст книги "Dark Ararat"

Автор книги: Brian Stableford

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SEVEN

The corridors through which Matthew and Vince Solari were conducted were narrow and mazy, with no ninety-degree turns. They reminded Matthew of the subsurface lunar habitat in which he’d stayed before joining the frozen Chosen, but that wasn’t surprising. That too had been a mini-ecosphere located within a much larger, essentially inhospitable, mass. He guessed that the principal differences between the two habitats would only be obvious on a much larger scale—a scale that was difficult to appreciate from within.

The Mare Moscoviense maze had been a cone whose sharp end pointed toward the moon’s center of gravity; life on the kind of space-habitat that Hopenow was had to be organized in cylindrical layers, in which “down” was also “out” because gravity was simulated by spin. Knowing this, Matthew found nothing surprising in the fact that the spaces inhabited by Hope’s mini-Gaea were curved and intricately curled. Nor was there anything particularly startling about the fact that so many of the side passages were dark; many parts of Mare Moscoviense had been fitted with human-responsive switches that provided light where and when it was needed and allowed darkness to fall when there were no human eyes.

What did surprise him, a little, was the dust. Mare Moscoviense had not been an unduly tidy environment, and its walls had accumulated a rich heritage of ingeniously stubborn graffiti, but it had been relentlessly swept clean by resident nanobots programmed to collect flakes of human skin and other associated organic debris for recycling. Hopemust have started out on its long journey equipped with similar nanobots, but they seemed to have fallen into disrepair. Dust had been allowed to accumulate on surfaces and in countless nooks and crannies, to the extent that it supported its own ecosystems of mites and predatory arachnids. Cobwebs could been seen dangling from ceilings and masking high-set corners.

Matthew was reluctant to take it for granted that Hope’s dust was a symptom of decay or slovenliness, but when he added the observation to other evidence of unrepaired malfunctions—wall-panels moved to expose bundles of cables; makeshift handles glued to doors that should have been automatic; cracked keypads and taped-over screens—the general picture did seem to be one of lost or forsaken control.

It was only to be expected, Matthew knew, that an ecosphere and mechanisphere as small as Hopewould suffer a continuous erosion of organization. The comet core into which the original metal ship had been inserted had been intended to serve as a source of organic materials as well as providing invaluable momentum for the initial phase of the journey, but Shen would have been extremely fortunate to find an entire wish list of elements in its stonier and ferrous components. On the other hand, Hopehad been in the new system for three years, and if the system contained an Earthlike planet it must also be rich in other supernoval debris. Hope’s drones should have been able to scavenge an abundance of new resources from the outer system while the decelerating ship plotted a course toward its present orbit. The ship’s environments should have undergone a spectacular renaissance by now, unless the deterioration of its machines had become chronic, or its manpower seriously depleted.

It was, eventually, impossible to resist the conclusion that something was seriously rotten in the state of Hope, and in its mission to found a new world. The people on the surface were at odds with the crew, and seemingly with one another, and the crew seemed far from contented in their own little empire.

But what can you expect in a world without TV, Matthew thought. If the only person who ever broadcasts to the whole population is the captain, it’s no wonder that there’s no social adhesive to hold things together, no force of consensus.

It was wishful thinking, of course, but he couldn’t help dallying with the notion that there was nothing amiss here that couldn’t be corrected by the voice of a professional prophet: a man trained not merely to see the bigger picture but to provide it with an appropriate soundtrack.

Seen from another viewpoint, Matthew decided, there was something rather homely about the sight of dust-filmed shelves and broken latches. They could be taken as reminders of Earth’s surface, of the world in which Matthew had grown from infancy to adulthood. Nothing here seemed to be aliento him, except perhaps the purple face of the planet they were circling—and he did not find it at all difficult, as yet, to think of that as an authentic Earth-clone nurtured and educated in a slightly different fashion.

The crewman leading him through Hope’s corridors, by contrast, had presumably never known any environment but the ship; to Riddell and all his fellows, Hopeand Hopealone was home, refuge, and prison.

With what uneasy eyes must the crewpeople regard the kinds of images that Matthew and Vince Solari had been studying? To them, Matthew decided, the new world must be exactly as exotic, and as utterly alien, as Earth.

They passed other crewpeople in the corridors, often having to swing their shoulders in order to pass by without making contact, but the crewpeople did not seem to regard them with any conspicuous curiosity. At first, Matthew put this down to the fact that any novelty value that the reawakened had possessed three years ago must be long gone now. There was, however, something odd in the character of their disinterest, as if it were contrived or pretended. They put him in mind of extras on a TV set, whose function was to fade into the background—but he was too curious about them to accept that kind of bid for invisibility.

The crewpeople varied as much as might be expected of people whose ancestors had been plucked from half a hundred different Earthly nations, but they were all lean of limb, they all moved with a graceful athleticism, and they all had somatically modified feet. They all went seemingly barefoot, the smartsuit overlays on their long-toed feet as transparent as those on their hands, and their gait was peculiar. Living in half-gravity, they had not the same need as Earthpeople for stout, supportive legs. They were still walkers, clinging to a pedestrian way of life in their curving corridors, but many of them would have to spend at least part of their lives closer to Hope’s central axis, where they weighed much less—and even those who did not haveto do so had the option. At the heart of the planetoid legs would be virtually useless—but an extra pair of gripping limbs would not.

Matthew could not help comparing Hope’s “native population” to the lean and lithe mammal-analogues of the as-yet-nameless Ararat at which the ship had recently arrived. Matthew wondered whether his own thick thighs seemed ugly as well as clumsy to the crewpeople, and whether his lightly shod and stub-toed feet seemed lumpen and deformed. The somatic modifications adopted by the crew—and there must be others, he realized, in addition to the long toes—were essentially discreet, but their subtlety did not make them any less unsettling. The surface gravity of the new world was 0.92 of Earth’s, he had been told—but he had also been told that the remaining 8 percent made more difference than one might imagine. In much the same way, the slight alterations to human form that the crew had adopted made more difference than Matthew could have imagined on the basis of his acquaintance with Earthly “cosmetic engineering.” The same principle must apply in reverse; his stouter legs, stubby toes, and sturdier frame must seem alien as well as ugly to the crew.

Solari and I must be stronger by far than they are, Matthew said to himself. We’re still adapted to Earthly gravity, whereas they’re born and bred for half-weight. They may be the gymnasts and long-jumpers of the interplanetary Olympics, but we’re the weightlifters and shot-putters.

Within a moment of framing the thought he pulled back from it, regretting the competitive impulse that had framed it, and wondering whether that same instinct might be partly responsible for the tensions that existed between crew and “cargo.”

He would have followed the line of thought further had he not been interrupted by the sudden clamor of someone shouting his surname. At first, because of the curvature of the corridor, he could not tell from what direction the shout came, but as he looked around he realized that it must have come from a side-branch which he, Riddell, and Solari had just passed. Already, however, the extras on the set had ceased to be mere background and had made a busy crowd of themselves. The space behind him was filled in with remarkable rapidity by passers-by intent on forming a queue—and when he tried to turn around, the queue would not even stop, let alone open its ranks to let him retrace his steps. The crewmen were light, and far from powerful, but they could occupy space as insistently as anyone, and Matthew could not thrust a way through without resorting to actual violence.

“We’re nearly there, Professor Fleury,” Riddell called back to him—but Matthew suspected that the loudness of the call was intended as much to drown out the continued appeals of whoever had tried to speak to him as to give him information.

Matthew overcame his automatic hesitation quickly enough, and tried to thrust a way through the suddenly gathered crowd. Mere rudeness made no impact, and he actually had to throw his weight at the people blocking his way. Had it been a straightforward barging contest he would have won with ease, but they were far too clever for that. They moved so that his arms met empty air—but his clumsy feet had nowhere to go.

In effect, they meekly allowed him to trip over their clever feet—but they were far from careless of the damage he might do to their toes. Even as he stumbled they began a litany of complaint that really did drown out the voice of whoever had called out.

Matthew could not see what was going on in the side-corridor because he could not force a way back to it, but the person who had tried to attract his attention had obviously made as little headway as he.

When Riddell helped him back to his feet, Matthew had to admire the slickness with which the operation had been accomplished. No one else in the corridor was carrying a sidearm, and no one else was an obvious member of an escort party, but everyone there had been ready to act in concert as soon as anyone unauthorized to do so attempted to make contact with the two defrosters.

“What’s going on?” Solari demanded of Riddell, his detective instincts immediately coming into play. “Who was the man who called out? Why was he not allowed to talk to Dr. Fleury?”

“I’m very sorry, professor,” Riddell said, ignoring Solari and addressing himself solely to Matthew. “These corridors are always busy, and we’ve had to cultivate skills and etiquette for coping with that. You’re not used to it, so you can’t help being clumsy. These people really should have got used to giving colonists more leeway.”

There was an immediate clamor of apology as the people who had tripped him up assured him that it was entirely their fault—but the wall of flesh remained quite impregnable. No one moved a centimeter to make way for him. There was no way for him to go but forward.

“It’s okay,” Matthew said to Solari. “An accident.” But while he said it he was looking into the green eyes of their guide, observing the reflexive hostility of the adamantine stare that met his own half-contemptuous glare. He really does think he’s at war, Matthew thought. However this conflict first arose, it’s infected each and every one of them.

“No harm done,” Riddell said, tugging gently on Matthew’s arm to urge him forward again.

“None at all,” Matthew assured him, deciding that from now on, he had to exercise all possible caution in his dealings with the crew. He allowed himself to be urged into action again, and only glanced back once to marvel at the way in which the sudden queue had melted away.

As they resumed their progress through the curved corridors, Matthew followed the train of thought. These people presumably no longer had the commitment to the mission that had carried their forefathers out of the solar system. It had only required five lifetimes of isolation, and maybe twice as many generations, to turn them into a new species with their own ideas and objectives. Whatever else they wanted, they probably wanted rid of every sleeper in their vaults. They wanted rid of the past, of the pressure of inherited obligations. They wanted their freedom. But how far were they prepared to go to get it? And how fast would their remaining inhibitions decay if the awakened sleepers remained obdurate in their insistence that Hopebelonged to themand had no reason for being except to serve theirpurposes and answer theirdemands?

That, Matthew realized, must be the true cause of the rebellious attitude simmering on the planet’s surface. There was a matter of principle at stake. The would-be colonists were trying to recover and assert the authority that was, in their eyes, their right. But where was Shen Chin Che, the owner of the Ark and guarantor of that right?

“This is worse than I thought,” Solari whispered in his ear.

“Whispering is probably futile,” Matthew whispered back. “They can hear everything, if they want to—and they’re probably interested enough to listen hard.”

Their guide paused before a door that seemed no grander than the rest. It opened when he brushed the keypad with his fingers, but he did not follow them through. Presumably, he remained on guard just as he had while they were in their temporary quarters.

EIGHT

The room to which they had been brought was luxurious, after a fashion, and reassuringly personalized in its decoration. Captain Milyukov was a family man, and his walls proudly proclaimed the fact. He appeared to have at least four children, and perhaps as many as six, although three of the faces smiling from the photographic ensembles were so physically distinct from him and from one another that they seemed highly unlikely to be biologically related. It did not seem inconceivable to Matthew, however, that Milyukov might have been biologically related to his ultimate predecessor as captain. Although the cast of his features was not as flamboyantly Oriental as Shen Chin Che’s, and the color of his skin was the same verdigrised parchment hue as Frans Leitz’s, he looked more typical of Hope’s first cadre of masters than his name had suggested.

For some reason, Matthew took heart from that—but he was still anxious to know exactly what had become of Shen Chin Che, and glad that he now had an opportunity to find out.

“My name is Konstantin Milyukov,” the captain told them, as he stood up to greet them. “You are Professor Fleury, of course, and you are Inspector Solari.” He ushered them to high-backed armchairs clad in some kind of cultured leather. Milyukov’s gestures seemed strangely grandiose to Matthew’s Earth-educated eyes—more so than Frans Leitz’s, even though the medical orderly had also been adapted by long habit to the low gravity. The captain took a third chair, which had been positioned to form an isosceles triangle with those set for his visitors, with Milyukov at the peak. He didn’t offer them food or drink.

“I wish that I could welcome you both to better circumstances,” the captain went on, “but you will already have gathered that this is something of an emergency. I wish that it had not been necessary to awaken you until the colony was on a much firmer footing, but our plans have been overtaken by events. We all need to know exactly how Bernal Delgado died, and why the people at Base Three are refusing to reveal the identity of his murderer.”

“Refusing?” Solari echoed. “Are you sure they’re refusing? Perhaps they don’t know who killed him, or why.”

“One or two of them may not know,” Milyukov admitted. “Perhaps as many as four—but if those innocent of any involvement had mounted their own investigation in a methodical manner, they would have been able to find out easily enough what happened. Perhaps negligence held them back, or perhaps they were unprepared to face up to what they might find. In any case, the situation requires a newcomer with a proper sense of duty. To tell you the truth, Inspector Solari, I do not expect this to be a particularly challenging case, even if you arrive at Base Three to find a solid conspiracy of liars—but we do need you to ensure that charges are brought and that the truth of this sad charade becomes clear.”

“Who’s we?” Solari wanted to know.

“Everybody,” Milyukov replied, without hesitation. “You will have gathered, of course, that there are disagreements aboard Hopeas well as conflicts on the surface, but it is in everybody’s interests to know why Professor Delgado was killed, in order that the rumors that have begun to circulate can be quashed. It is in everyone’s interests to know the truth.”

“Except the murderer,” Solari observed, “and anyone shielding the murderer. If, as you seem to think, there are at least seven people shielding the murderer, I’m inclined to wonder why they’re so conspicuously uninterested in the truth.”

“Sometimes,” Milyukov said, “people intent on attaining a certain end become rather short-sighted. They sacrifice honesty to the cause of winning the argument—but in the long run, an argument won by dishonesty always leads to disaster.”

“Can we cut the crap?” Solari said. “So far as I can tell, you want the colony to stay here, and you want all the people who were frozen down before the ship left the solar system down on the surface. You presumably have the power to attain that result regardless of what anyone else wants, simply by waking up the sleepers a few at a time and shuttling them down whether they like it or not, but I guess you haven’t yet resorted to that kind of solution because you still want to win the argument and you still think it’s winnable. You want me to find out who killed Delgado because you think it will help you win the argument. How?”

Milyukov didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by the full-frontal assault. “It is in everyone’s best interests that the colony succeed,” he said, mildly. “If it were to fail, that would be a catastrophe from everyone’s point of view. There is a faction on the surface that claims that it is impossible for humans to remain on the surface without precipitating an ecocatastrophe more devastating than the one that was threatening Earth when you and your companions decided to leave it behind—and that the possibility that the planet is inhabited by intelligent humanoids makes that doubly unacceptable. It is my belief that Bernal Delgado was killed because he believed that he had discovered something vital to the settlement of this debate. I believe the crude pretense that he was killed by an alien was intended to favor the cause of those who want to abandon the colony—a cause that he did not support.”

“Are you certain of that?” Solari asked.

“I have no reason to think otherwise,” Milyukov said, blithely ignoring the fact that it was not at all the same thing. “Delgado certainly intended to travel downriver, but he never gave any vocal support to those of his colleagues who looked on the expedition as a straightforward attempt to prove the continued existence of the humanoids. If they do exist, of course, I want to find them as badly as anyone—but I want the matter settled. I need you to put a stop to this ridiculous pretence that Delgado might have been killed by an alien, inspector.”

“And why, exactly,” Matthew put in, “do you need me?”

Milyukov’s eyes were not quite as green as Leitz’s or Riddell’s, but their relative dullness did not make their gaze seem less penetrative.

“For exactly the same reason, professor,” the captain said. “To discover the truth—if you can. I’ve studied your background, just as I’ve studied the inspector’s, but I don’t hold your reputation against you. I’ve seen tapes of your TV performances, but I know that you began your career as an entirely reputable scientist.”

Matthew had been damned with faint praise before, but this seemed a trifle unwarranted. He had always been an entirely reputable scientist, and his TV presence had never compromised his scientific integrity.

“Bernal Delgado was my friend,” Matthew observed. “I’ll do my very best to take up where he left off.”

“And you will also want to see justice done in the matter of your friend’s murder,” Milyukov said. There was no overt trace of sarcasm in the captain’s voice, but Matthew was reasonably sure that the man was completely insincere. Matthew could not believe that he had been brought back from frozen sleep because the captain believed that he was a potential ally. His acquaintance with Shen Chin Che was probably sufficient to make him a potential enemy, in the captain’s eyes. There was a diplomatic game in progress, and his awakening must surely have been a concession to the people on the ground who had demanded that Bernal must be replaced, in order that his work might continue.

Matthew decided that it was time to follow Solari’s example and try to cut through the crap. “Where’s Shen Chin Che?” he asked.

Milyukov was ready for him; the glaucous gaze did not waver. “Somewhere on the microworld,” he said, calmly. “I don’t know where, exactly. It isa microworld now, of course, although the recently awakened habitually refer to it as a ship. If Hopereally were a mere ship, a man could hardly contrive to hide for long, but her inner structure now has the floor space of a sizable Earthly town.”

“Shen’s in hiding?” Matthew said, incredulously. “Why?” He already knew why, of course. Shen had built the Ark. Shen had ownedthe Ark. Shen must have come out of SusAn believing that he still owned the Ark, and that he had the final voice in any adventure undertaken by the Ark. The crew had obviously taken a different view—but they had been unable to persuade Shen to align his view with theirs, and they had been unable to hold on to him when he had decided to go his own way.

“Because he laid claim to an authority that was no longer his,” was Milyukov’s version, “and because he resorted to violence in a hopeless attempt to reclaim it. He, more than anyone else, is responsible for the deterioration of the relationship between crew and colonists, and for the factional divisions that have subsequently arisen.”

“He was one of the prime movers in the construction of the four Arks,” Matthew pointed out. “Second in importance only to Narcisse himself. Hopewas his personal contribution to the great quest. You can hardly blame him for harboring proprietorial sentiments.”

“Shen Chin Che did not build the original Hope,” Milyukov retorted, flatly. “He did not shape a single hull-plate, nor did he drive home a single rivet. He merely directed the flow of finance, and the money that he regarded as his was, in fact, the product of long-term dishonest manipulation of markets and financial institutions. Perhaps, within the corrupt economic and political system that then embraced Earth and the extraplanetary extensions of Earthly society, that was sufficient to establish ownership to the original vessel, but even if that claim were justified, Hopeis a very different structure now. We—the crew—were the builders of the new Hope, in a perfectly literal sense. We planned the reconstruction, and we carried it out. Hopeis ours now, and always will be.”

“Are you telling me there’s been a mutiny?” Matthew said, knowing well enough what Milyukov’s counterclaim would be but wanting to hear it formally stated.

“What I’m telling you, Professor Fleury,” the captain retorted, coldly, “is that there has been a revolution. Hope’s crew and cargo have been liberated from the crude restraints imposed by the obsolete political and economic system that was temporarily in force when the original Hopewas constructed.”

Matthew did not want to reply too swiftly to this news. He knew perfectly well that 700 years was a long time in the evolution of a human society, even one that was probably no more than a few hundred strong. It was not difficult to imagine that successive generations of crewmen could have come to a notion of their role in the scheme of things quite different from that imagined by their original employers. It might have been stranger had they contrived to avoid coming to the conclusion, by slow degrees, that the ship they were reshaping again and again was theirsand ought to remain theirs.

Solari was not as shy as Matthew. “A revolution,” he repeated, guardedly. “A socialistrevolution, you mean?”

“It’s not a word we use,” the captain informed him, “but labels are unimportant. What matters is that we, the makers and inhabitants of the new Hope, have set aside all the claims made by the original Hope’s so-called owners, on the grounds that they have no proper moral foundation.”

“But what kind of new society are we talking about?” Solari demanded. “A democracy, or an autocracy? Are you telling us that yourun everything now, or do we still get a vote?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Milyukov said, as Matthew had expected him to.

“You must always have known that the Chosen wouldn’t play ball,” Solari went on, recklessly. “So you decided to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. They were promised an Earth-clone, and they don’t think this world qualifies—but you don’t care. You want to maroon them here, whether they have a real chance of survival or not. You’ve turned pirate.”

“Absolutely not,” was Milyukov’s unsurprising judgment of that allegation. “It is, in fact, the crew who are, and always have been, intent on fulfilling their manifest destiny: the role in human affairs that they, and perhaps they alone at present, are capable of fulfilling. Everything we have done in reshaping Hopehas been devoted to that end. They only pirates aboard Hopeare Shen Chin Che and his gang of saboteurs.”

Solari had been slightly wrong-footed by the reference to “manifest destiny” but Matthew knew what it must mean.

“The crew have decided that this is the first in a potentially infinite series of seedings,” he told Solari. “They do want to set up a successful colony here, and they’re probably becoming desperate in their attempt to believe that it’s an attainable goal, but their long-term goal is to repeat the exercise again and again. Some of the would-be colonists are realistic enough to settle for delaying Hope’s departure for as long as possible, but the rest are holding out for a better Earth-clone. The captain is obviously a reasonable man, so he’s willing to come to an agreement with the former group, but he wants Shen Chin Che out of his hair and down on the surface. He’s trying to persuade us that we should see things his way, by necessity if not by choice.”

“So where does Delgado’s murder fit into the argument?” Solari asked, pointedly addressing the question to Matthew rather than to their host.

“He doesn’t know,” Matthew guessed. “But he daren’t neglect the possibility that if he can’t find a way to use it, someone else will. Bernal’s testimony as to the long-term prospects of the colony might well have been vital to whichever cause he decided to support, not just because he was a leading expert in ecological genomics back on Earth but because of the reputation he brought with him as a prophet and a persuader.”

“I must repeat,” Milyukov said, finally letting his irritation show, “that the situation is more complicated than you can possibly guess. You bring to it an understanding that is seven hundred years out of date. Earth has changed out of all recognition since you went into SusAn, just as Hopehas, and all the assumptions you brought with you are quite obsolete now.”

Matthew had to restrain himself from expressing aloud the opinion that this was nonsense. The political and economic systems now in place within Earth’s solar system were of no particular relevance to Hope’s situation, but the ideologies and ambitions that the would-be colonists had brought into SusAn were very relevant indeed. Whether or not there were still Hardinists on Earth, there was an abundance of them among Shen Chin Che’s Chosen People, and not one of them was likely to accept that his or her politics were now “obsolete” simply because the crew had decided to stage a takeover bid. Earth—a planet apparently still occupied by billions, even after a near-terminal ecocatastrophe—had surely had time for a dozen revolutions, counterrevolutions, and counter-counterrevolutions of its own, and its inhabitants would doubtless react to news of Hope’s discovery as they saw fit, but how could that make an iota of difference to the reactions of the awakened colonists? Perhaps the machines ruled Earth now, as some of his rival prophets had warned, operating the Ultimate Autocracy, or perhaps the anarchists had finally contrived a rule of law without corruptible leaders, but here in the new world’s system, all the popular shades of twenty-first century Hardinism, all the nuances of Green Conservatism and all the factions of Gray Libertarianism were alive. Some of them might still be frozen down, but those that were not would be kicking.

Shen Chin Che, whom many had considered to be the boldest of all the pharaohs of Earthly Capitalism, had awakened to find himself a stranger in a society that had reshaped itself in his absence, but it was absurd to imagine that he could ever have accepted a new status quo meekly. Shen had gone to his long sleep not merely a builder and an owner but a hero and a messiah. If he had woken up to find himself an overthrown dictator, fit only for ritual humiliation as the representative of an obsolete order, he would instantly have transformed himself into a revolutionary: a zealot bent on the restitution of the old order. How could Milyukov’s people have failed to anticipate that? By the same token, Matthew thought, how could Shen not have anticipated the possibility of exactly such a revolution as Milyukov’s ancestors had carried out? He must have. Might he actually have expected it to happen? Perhaps. And if he had, might he not have made provisions?