Текст книги "Regenesis"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

So. Decision made. Die cast. The new staff would go through medical, take their pre‑Contracting tape. Contracting itself took a single moment, once that essential groundwork was done. They’d first be taught social behaviors and protocols in lab, nobody but Admin knowing where they were going, and there would be no great fuss here to disturb sera’s mood. All sera had to do was agree to it and sign the request.

Once it was done–they could draw a breath, not be working twelve hours on and twelve off, as they were now, as they had done for months, while sera studied day and night, and ran background checks on everyone around her. They didn’t disagree with sera’s preoccupation with security. They weren’t quite sure that the threat to sera’s life was entirely past. They’d seen her through childhood. They’d gotten her this far alive.

But the day was coming when sera would need a staff far more complex than they had ever been, and in which they might not be as close to sera, as all‑in‑all, as they had once been. They saw that coming–though Florian was upset by the prospect. Sera seemed less happy because of the pressure on her, and that defined everything. She’d snapped at him. She’d never done that and not apologized. So they had to take special care of her.

“We should monitor Justin tonight,” Florian said abruptly, “or Hicks will. I don’t want that.”

Catlin said, “I can do it.”

“Set it up,” Florian said. “I have to make sure Gianni stays on track until dinnertime. Then we’ll trade assignments, and I’ll go.”

The storm passed overhead. On the monitor, a ray of sun hit the tower, in the gray, glistening world outside.

A private plane, glistening white, came in wheels‑down for a landing on a puddled runway. The tail emblem, the Infinite Man of ReseuneLaboratories, was distinctive. It was Reseune One.

Yanni was back.

BOOK ONE Section 1 Chapter ix

APRIL 25, 2424

1748H

“How was Novgorod?” Ari asked purposely, over the shrimp cocktail. “Quiet?”

“Agreeably so, actually,” Yanni said. He had never yet asked the reason for the dinner invitation.

Not uncommon for Yanni. Yanni Schwartz gave very little away, and he’d always accorded the same privilege of reticence to her, since she had been on his good list, or thought she was. He was on rejuv, of course, dyed his hair, was eightyish and looked forty, except that most people that looked forty weren’t forty. He wasn’t handsome, but he had a strong face. She liked that face. And it made her feel better that he showed up on time and didn’t act guilty at all–as if he was going to have a reason to give her. Oh, she so hoped he had a reason. Something in her unknotted just because he’d come in and met her cheerfully, without a flinch.

He’d brought her a trinket from the capital. Giraud used to do that, and this one, when she unwrapped it, looked even to be from the same company as some of Giraud’s gifts. It was a desk sitter, a little glass globe with a holo insect that crawled in a circle so long as you set it in the light. He had handed it to her before they sat down at table and she had it by her plate. It kept running, brilliant green armor and serrated jaws, round and round.

The gift‑giving urge in Yanni was new. She noted that.

One thing was sure: Yanni had thought about her when he was in Novgorod, and Yanni had never particularly curried favor: he’d always been fair, and expected it in return. Now that he was here, at her table, she could actually quit fluxing and remember Yanni, not the reports she’d found in System. Maybe he hadbrought her the thing just because it tickled his fancy, and made him think of her.

In her opinion, that was the way family ought to be. She’d almost begun to think of him that way. Until this last week.

“I love the bug,” she said.

“Beetle,” he said. “A Glorious Beetle.”

“Well, he is, but is that his name?”

“ Plusiotis gloriosa. Native to the western hemisphere of Earth.”

“He’s really that green?”

Yanni took a little advert card from his coat pocket and set it in the middle of the table, between them and facing her. “You can actually get a collection of insects. The butterflies were obviously the big item. But you have one of those, I remembered. I thought you’d rather have the beetle.”

She had Giraud’s butterfly. They lately had real butterflies in the Conservatory. All sorts of them. But they didn’t have a beetle.

“I absolutely love him,” she said. It had been ages since she’d spent time in the Conservatory. Reseune sprawled, from the high end, where Wing One sat, down to the town and the fields, and she hadn’t been to the Conservatory since–oh, long before the shooting that had brought Denys down, long before the world had come apart. She and Maman used to go there when she was small, to walk the garden paths and see the flowers.

The family that she had once had, had been broken by Denys’ order. Yanni’s family, too. Scattered by the same set of orders, sacrificed to the Project that was her, sent out to a distant star‑station, depriving Yanni of relatives, including stupid Jenna. She wouldn’t be surprised if Yanni did resent her. But she hoped he didn’t.

Lump‑lump‑lump, in its endless silent circle.

She dropped her napkin over it, to remove the distraction. Looked Yanni in the eyes–they were brown, direct, hard eyes.

“It doesn’t have an off switch,” Yanni said. “Except light.”

“So there’s nothing up I should know about,” she said, direct to the point, regarding Novgorod and the legislative session.

“Oh, the Paxers are kicking up the usual fuss, we didn’tget the remediation increase we wanted, and there’s talk about putting an embargo on Earth‑origin wood veneers.”

So he wasn’t going to get to the topic of secret meetings straight off. So neither did she. “It’ll only drive up the price. It won’t ever stop the demand, will it?”

“It might drive the price far beyond what the average citizen can afford. Take the mass out of mass market. Earth is claiming its woods are a sustainable resource. We’re saying they’re not, on an interstellar scale, and we’re talking about a hundred‑year embargo.”

“If Alliance doesn’t go with it–” she began. She hadn’t been interested at all in that, but a brain cell fired, and she couldn’t help it.

“Alliance is actually going with it.”

Thatrated a lift of the brows, for an item that hadn’t been to the forefront of the news at all. The Alliance kept their hands off their own forested world, at Pell, a planet called Downbelow, barred exploitation by vote of the station residents, if not the far‑flung ship‑communities that were the greatest majority of that government.

So the whole ecosystem of Downbelow was protected from intrusion–because practically speaking there was nobody but Pell Station that would mount an expedition down there. The ecological sensibilities of the Alliance capital, however, had not stopped the Alliance merchanters from buying up luxuries out of Sol System hand over fist, which they were selling, hand over fist, to Union. Since the Alliance sat halfway between Union and Sol, a ban on certain Earth products couldn’tbe meaningful without Alliance compliance, and she’d have bet Alliance, composed mostly of merchanter families, wouldn’t possibly go with it.

Uncommon that Alliance and Union both, former enemies, ended up banning something so prized by the rich. Never mind that they could easily synthesize the product. Never mind that there were very good synthetic veneers, down to the cell structure, if you wanted that. The fact a thing was realaroused a certain lust to possess, in certain moneyed circles. People would pay fortunes for what was realand Earth‑origin. Crazy, in her opinion.

“Well,” she said. “So no more wood from Earth?”

“I think it will pass in the Council of Worlds,” he said. “A lot of talk, a lot of fire and fury and discussion. The spotlight’s on the users of certain products, and no senator wants to be tagged as one of the conspicuously rich consumers. They’ve exempted historical pieces from the ban. I’ve objected that we’ll see an uncommon glut of relics coming out of Earth. And we get one other quiet little provision–the Hinder Stars Defense Treaty gets moved forward. Talks renewed.”

“That’s good.” It was.

“So,” he said, in a changing‑the‑subject tone, “how are things here?”

And still no mention of the private meetings. “Same as last week. Same as the week before.” There was some local news, not as dramatic as the ban on wood veneers. “The new wing has its foundations laid.”

“Saw that, as the plane came in. Looking quite impressive back there.”

“They’re mostly finished with the storm tunnels and accesses now–conduits are going in. Andthey finished the power plant up at the upriver site. Precip stations are about to go online.”

Not that much besides a twenty‑bed residential bunker and a machine shop stood on that remote site yet. The new building, well upriver, was in the early stages, a lot of raw earth and robots at the moment, superintended by a small azi technical crew and a supervisor, and soon to be occupied by the loneliest and craziest people on Cyteen, line‑runners on the automated precip stations.

“Fine,” he said. “And how are your studies going?”

“Oh, good enough.”

“So–” Archly. “–are we moving researchers in upriver?”

“We’re a few months from that.”

“I don’t think I’d like the climate.”

She didn’t like the implication of that, not at all. He’d sensed she was stalking him. He’d Got her. She was sure her face had reacted in some dismay. As of now, it had a frown, which she immediately purged.

“Oh? And what did you do” she asked, in her best Ari One mode, “in Novgorod?”

“You have to trust me.”

And nowwas he going to bring up those secret meetings? “Oh. I do, but I’d really like to know, and you know I’d like to know.”

“Well, I agreed with Corain on a compromise. Fargone’s hurting for jobs. His constituency atFargone is extremely important to him getting re‑elected if he’s challenged for the seat. So we put in a new lab wing. We get Centrist Party support on a rider tacked onto that bill, becauseit helps Corain’s constituency at Fargone, and, here’s the core of it: the Eversnow project gets underway.”

“Eversnow!” That hadn’t been part of the report.

“Eversnow.”

“It’s a dead project.”

“Not dead. We get a station at Eversnow, a full blown research station onEversnow, and a new lab at Fargone that’s very quietly aimed at terra‑forming, exactly as originally planned on Cyteen–the Centrists’ favorite dream–but out there, where it’s notgoing to cause us trouble.”

Her pulse rate was getting up. Her blink rate would be. And he’d read that in a second. “So we’re suddenly friends with the Centrists and we’re terraforming Eversnow, of all things. And producing alpha azi at Fargone.”

“A few.”

“We havea lab at Fargone. The Rubin Project was at Fargone.”

“Mostly terraforming research…a clearing house for what we learn on Eversnow. Ultimately–ultimately azi, yes.”

“Alpha production has never left the planet!”

“Our personnel, mind, no release of proprietary secrets. By the time we’re bringing any great number of azi into the Eversnow system, we’ll be on the planet. Azi production. Full scale by then. You’ll be putting together the sets for that population in your lifetime.”

The Eversnow deal had been dead as long as the first Ari. And Reseune had allowed a prerogative of exclusivity to lapse, enabling labs that high‑end, that capable, to run out at Fargone–with the possibility of somebody outside Reseune staff laying hands on the manuals? Bad enough they’d licensed out military thetas to BucherLabs and had thoseproblems to mop up for the next forty years of the first Ari’s career–they’d never done anything like this.

And terraforming? That was a dead issue.

“None of this is in the news,” she said calmly.

“None of it is going to be in the news. It’s under deep cover, disguised as that azi lab.”

“But, damn it, Yanni.” She kept her voice down, kept the whole situation under control, holding the lid on. “I assume you’ve got a very, very good reason. What happened to the remediation budget?”

“It’ll wait a year.”

“While we create a terraforming lab out at Fargone?”

“Yes,” Yanni said, head‑on, “It was the first Ari’s project. It got scrapped.”

“The first Ari isn’t alive now. I am. And I have an opinion. You didn’t ask me. Where are my budget items, Yanni?”

“Next year.”

“We have two labs full of scientists we’re going to have to fund till next year and I’m making a heavy hit on budget as it is!”

“I know that.”

“So you could have talked about this. Eversnow, for God’s sake! And an alpha lab! What else?”

“We manage the lab, top to bottom. Our personnel run it, no training of local techs to do anything: they’ll all be Reseune people, born here, trained here, retiring here, ultimately.”

Yanni’s voice was so quiet, so reasonable. He wasn’t that way with a lot of people. But he knew he’d sneaked this one past her, and he was presenting a case in which she was going to have the say. She’d be in charge when this thing came into full bloom, and Yanni–Yanni would be gone by then, at least gone from Admin, and back in the lab.

That thought settled her heart rate a tick or two. She didn’t want that, yet.

And she thought about what he was doing. He’d been meeting with Corain, of all people. Corain didn’t meet with Science.

“So.” she said, “and Citizens voted for it.”

“Jobs,” Yanni said. “A lot of jobs. Council knows what it’s for. We’re just not advertising it for the media yet.”

“They know, and they voted for this.”

“Everybody but Internal Affairs and State. Two nays. I’m sure you know.”

She knew. Corain had gone along. Jobs, Yanni said. Jobs at Far‑gone. Elder Ari had warned her about unrest in the population–the Citizens Bureau, which Corain represented. Ari had warned her about unhappiness–at Fargone, at Pan‑Paris, which wasn’t on the expansion routes; both flashpoints, fobs had been scarce, opportunities scant since the War. Fargone was supposed to be in for major expansion when the military had planned to go ahead with Eversnow; she knew that was the history of it at that star.

And then peace had happened, and the project had stalled–people elsewhere hadn’t thought terraforming anything was a good idea; and then the first Ari had died, and it had stayed a dead issue for twenty years.

But the Eversnow collapse hadhad an effect, politically. Fargone Station’s independence tilt, voting sometimes with the Expansionists, sometimes with the Centrists, and bargaining hard for its vote, had been a factor in the Defense election that had put Vladislaw Khalid in–her least favorite Bureau head in her own lifetime.

And that unrest, of people feeling trapped and dead‑ended, was still out there at Fargone and Pan‑Paris, in the electorate of Citizens, in Defense. It spread even through the Science Bureau, out there: the Expansionists had just squeaked through its traditional majority in the last election Science had had.

That was dangerous, even if it was just one star‑station.

She had an inkling all of a sudden where Yanni was leading with this little surprise, and it wasn’t stupid: it was an answer to the kind of problems Yanni had faced in histenure as Proxy Councillor for Science andhead of the Expansionist Party. Give Fargone a major project, jobs, prosperity–and mutate Fargone’s maverick electorate into one more in line with Reseune, who’d be running the project. Setting a whole new population‑burst of azi out there, who would, over time, migrate to freed‑man status at Fargone and then, supposedly, at Eversnow Station, azi who’d teach their own CIT children theiropinions–

And Corain was going along with it? She felt her week‑long Mad cool off just a degree. Defense still had a strong interest in Eversnow. It was going to be a problem to pry their fingers off it, and Yanni was trying to work with them…had Yanni thought of that?

“We set up an alpha‑capable lab at Fargone,” Yanni was saying quietly, and she began to track it, “but the locals are naturally immediately thinking of CIT‑use, ordinary CIT births, and that’s what they know. Corain hasn’t mentioned Eversnow in his own arguments, or at least it hadn’t leaked by this morning. But Council has something to gain from this bill. Fargone’s going to be the stepping‑off point for Eversnow, which will become more and more economically important to Fargone voters and to the Citizens Bureau. But most of all, to us. Not just a new city. A new planet. For us, a whole new genetic resource. A whole new population to birth and set up. Corain’s agreeing to cooperate with us on the Hinder Stars Defense Treaty, but we agreed to drop the remediation funding increase for this session, for this project. Seed money. Corain gains jobs and votes and he gets funding without a tax increase. But ultimately we gain everything.”

The damned thing was an appalling daisy chain of favors exchanged. She suddenly had a much wider window into the content of the mysterious meetings, and here was Yanni–stolid, just‑the‑facts Yanni, non‑activist through her whole life–advancing an outrageously ambitious Expansionist agenda the first Ari had contemplated and slowed down on, toward the end of her life, as too much, too far.

In Yanni’s plan, they acquired not just Eversnow as a base, but the string of stars beyond it; that was the thing. The strand that had been, without Eversnow, unattainable. Defense wanted that: she could see it.

And the Centrists, particularly numerous in the Citizens Bureau, whose whole platform had always been to have Union’s power to stay clustered tightly around Cyteen, were suddenly going along with Eversnow? The first Ari had started out supporting terraforming at Cyteen, her mother Olga’s project, and then pulled the rug from under that once rejuv manufacture became a vital industry. The Centrists, wanting to expand population, not territory, had been outraged. They’d seen it as a ploy to keep Cyteen mostly desert, carved up into Administrative Territories, notably Reseune’s protective reserves, where CITs couldn’t get a foothold. They’d been furious and called Eversnow a pie‑in‑the‑sky piece of politics that was going to give Reseune one more protectorate and never would benefit the average CIT.

And now the Centrists, who had been so fundamentally opposed to that project at the edge of space, were suddenly willing to give up their campaign to terraform Cyteen and concentrate on Eversnow.

The universe had changed in a week.

And she didn’t know enough. Eversnow had been a problem she’d planned to postpone for decades.

A world locked in a snowball effect. A world without a spring for millions of years–with, however, the strong likelihood that there was still life there, genetically unique, locked in rocks in the sub‑basement of a frozen ocean.

In the first Ari’s day, with all of humankind busy blowing each other up in the War, the Expansionists and the military had both been hot to seed Eversnow for their own reasons–their hedge on a bet, if the Alliance had hit Cyteen. But Centrists hadn’t wanted to spend money there at all, and a few Centrist‑leaning scientists had argued they needed to preserve and study that world for a few decades.

Too late, by then. An early Defense Bureau project had already broken the freeze, or begun to break it, artificially, with solar heat, and tipped the balance toward a melt…how that had ever turned out, she didn’t know in any detail. Earth‑origin phytoplankton reportedly bloomed in certain areas, thanks to Defense.

She would not have done that: she would have said a vehement no. It was a living world, and living worlds were precious in the cosmos. Even snowballs. That was what she’d thought in her slight reading of the project–good they gave it up.

But now came politics. And Yanni was getting friendly with Corain? Establishing a population burst out at Fargone and then at Eversnow, where the Centrists weren’t paying attention–

That actually could be smart, she had to admit it. Centrists attracted the violent fringe elements, people like the Paxers and the Abolitionists, whose major agenda had gone from a unilateral peace in the Company Wars on the one hand, and an abolition of all azi production on the other. The Paxers and the Abolitionists had, as a curious side agenda, the terraforming of Cyteen, which they thought would break the power of Reseune, and thatwas how those fringe groups had found an ideological home in the Centrist Party.

But let Corain of Citizen shift the political focus to “jobs for Fargone,” and snuggle up to Science, and watch the fringe elements scramble to cope with that.

The first Ari had created her, she’d said, to keep watch over her projects–among which was Gehenna, and maybe, yes, she supposed, that could include Eversnow, even if it wasn’t, like Gehenna, populated.

So, well, maybe Yanni didn’t deserve spacing.

A sudden expansion of Reseune interests out on the fringe of human space–a whole new strand of stars. New frontiers. A commitment to expansion–and to Expansionism, with all it stood for, and all the dangers in the deep unknown…

Was sheready to open that door to the universe and deal with whatever lay out there? Was she, for that matter, going to be as Expansionist in her own career as her predecessor had been? She didn’t know. Decisions were coming down on her too early…and she was about to be stuck with this one: there were ways for her to undo everything except the dispersal of the Earth genome into an alien, living world.

But Defense, by all reports, had already done that part, even including higher lifeforms.

“I’m not sure, Yanni. I’m still not sure. Tell me why.”

“A planet with only microbes to recommend it is interesting, but we have samples.”

“All right. Keep going. Why now?”

Yanni took a sip of wine. “Here’s the urgency in it. The War’s over; that used to be our cohesive factor, as a nation: we had to stop the Earth Company So now Union’s teetering somewhere between an amalgam of star‑stations and a fully formed state, and there’s power to be had, power Reseune holds virtually solo. Reseune keeps Union going in a specific direction, keeps a momentum, or God knows what it would do. The Council may govern, but Reseune still makes the rules that govern azi, and azi are still, and for a few centuries more, the source of the population base.”

“That’s supposed to end.”

“Not yet. And this is the reason. As long as we expand into new frontiers, CIT births won’t keep up with the need for population; azi go on being born, and Reseune goes on making the rules, the newest population goes on voting our way, and we’ll always outvote the Centrists and keep them from clustering all our assets around one vulnerable planet. Plus we retain our police power, where azi are concerned, and we remain a clearing‑house for information that most of the citizenry doesn’t even wantto know, but which could come back on their heads. We don’t know what the future holds, but it’s a sure bet the Centrists know less than we do. Earth is out of serious play in human politics for at least a century. It can’t even get a consensus together to manage its trade relations, and right now they see us as an endless source of funds and invention, so they don’t actually have to solve any of their problems. They sell us their antiquities, their artwork, their unique biologicals, and we make the worst of their politicians drunk with money and importance. The only thing they really badly want, we won’t sell them.”

That, of course, was rejuv. On a populous planet like Earth, it could be a disaster. And she saw Yanni’s point: left with nobodyto make a decision not to trade in it, it would have happened, and Earth would have collapsed.

“Earth won’t move until it’s uncomfortable,” she murmured, quoting. The rest of what Ari One had said was: It won’t make any decision until at least three of its factions combine.“So where do you see things going for us all? Another war?”

“Alliance has its own problems, transitioning from a collection of merchant captains to a government making law for two worlds. It’s set Pell off limits. It saw Gehenna as a potential resource, but now they know it’s a time bomb. So they came out of the War owning twoplanets they don’t want to touch–partly noble ethics. But this is the important part: partly it’s the paralysis of not havinga ReseuneLabs to make informed decisions, and they refuse to ask us what to do with Gehenna orPell. Their R&D was always driven by the likes of LucasCorp’s operation, all profit, no long‑range planning–ecological disaster in the making. Plus their two planets both have higher life to worry about. Our two worlds don’t. Right now they can’t do anything about what we do.”

“But,” she said, “Cyteen’s biosystem produces rejuv, and we can’t jeopardize that by terraforming here. Go over strictly to lab production and it drives up the cost of something everybody has to have for most of their life–so you create a class who can live for a century and a half being young, and separate them from the people who can’t afford it.”

Staff brought the next course, grilled fish, with citrus. It took a moment. And she was annoyed with staff, who should have waited for a signal. Probably the fish would have seriously overcooked. But she needed a stern talk with staff about interrupting. A very stern talk.

“So,” she said, after the obligatory compliments, and several bites further on.

“So,” Yanni said, perfectly composed.

“So I’m following everything you’re saying, and it makes sense. But why are you personally voting for terraforming Eversnow this fast? What if there’s something as important as rejuv down there? Something we can’tmake in a lab?”

“One reason: Reseune’s continued existence, its power to make decisions, aboveboard or in secret, is the core of all Union stability. Without us, Union falls apart. That’s not arrogance. That’s fact. Right now, Union isn’t populous enough to avoid fragmentation. Decisions are being taken. Some really stupid ideas are current in politics, and some damned selfish ones. Reseune is at a low ebb of power, during my interregnum, so it’s perceived–because I’m not an Emory, a Carnath, or a Nye–not even a Warrick. I’m an unknown, and it’s widely perceived I’m merely a footnote, filling time between Denys Nye’s control of Reseune–and your taking the office, for which all the Centrists are busy bracing themselves. They perceive me as weak, someone they can get concessions out of–before you come in. But on this one matter, on this, I am passionate. We need the expansion of human space to go on holding the power to make decisions; we need labs to extend our reach to other places, labs, incidentally, out of immediate view of Centrist leadership here on Cyteen…but I’m not advertising that feature of the plan. We may still find biologicals we can develop at Eversnow; and the experience will be invaluable; but right now, and in the immediate future, we need the expansion of our loyal voting base, before some short‑sighted, over‑content business interests on Cyteen Station and in Novgorod break up Reseune and let us fall behind the Alliance. Fatally so. In which case I guaranteeyou there’ll be another war. We need to hedge our bets by spreading outward. Concerns for microbes take second place. The way Earth is managing its affairs currently, we may be using your predecessor’s genetic Arks to recover what they lose.”

“And what if we lose something like rejuv because we rushed in and messed up a place we don’t wholly know?”

“We could lose something, yes. But we know what we gain. A power base. And whatever we mess up there, it won’t be us. The Centrists envision a planet they can live on in billions, like Earth, the great fantasy. They see this project as a foot in the door of that science. We get the Centrists involved faroutside the understanding of their comfortable power base on Cyteen, and we edge their children closer and closer to our point of view. The Long View…in this case, from a standpoint of distance from the center of Union. We get their kids involved in this project. We turn the Centrists into our asset. They go for the profit out there, being people with families they want to support–and we go on as we are, controlling colonization. There are other worlds beyond Eversnow. But we can’t reach them without stepping stones. Trade drivesexpansion. Trade drives us. And the Treaty of Pell meant our trade pays a price, it may have meant peace, but Alliance is getting fatter on a share of our trade. And some of those merchanters are using the profit to update armaments–the way some of our warships nowadays run a little cargo–of a medical and emergency nature. The Treaty may someday break down on that point. We have to get other options, we have to maintain our economic push that keepsus stronger than the Alliance, or see the consequences.”

It wasn’t a stupid idea. She could see that. And it was a vision. It might be stupid to think Expansionism could go on at the same pace forever, but there was something to it going on for a while: Earth was one planet, one star system, and fragile. Earth had antagonized all its colonies, who held the only safe direction for Earth to expand–Earth now knew it wasn’t going to grow without running into intelligence in the other directions, and they only hoped Earth didn’t provoke something out in the deep. Alliance was already committed in the direction of Gehenna, but that planet was a problem.

Eversnow would lead Union development further out on another tangent, away from Earth and farther out than the Alliance, down a strand of stars that worked like a river in space. Broaden Union’s population base, widen their territory, make them secure, and yes, make sure there were jobs. That had been a poser, but Yanni’s plan solved that at a stroke.

Going away from Alliance made them unassailable, militarily: Defense would like that. Folly for Alliance or Earth to attack something that much bigger; and a strong Union, with other resources, wouldn’t actually needEarth, or even Alliance…while a strong Union was a big market, for Earth, and for Alliance. So it could possibly preserve the peace better than standing still.