Other than that, they were learning nothing. Moreover, no one could offer any clue as to its possible origin, except to speculate that it could be a fuel tank, illegally dumped in space. Unlikely, though. It had been emitting signals. Junk tended not to do that. Discarded civilian fuel tanks never did.
Then the Raider’s science officer suggested that someone touch it. It was an off-hand suggestion—on the face of it, a safe one. There was no detectable radiation, it was cool, and the magnetic field was weak. So Petroff agreed and offered the science officer the opportunity to be the very first human to come into intimate contact with an alien construct, if alien it was.
Science Officer Raja Makindra swallowed hard, entered the hangar deck, and approached the craft-capsule-space-junk wishing he had at least gotten Petroff to grant him the naming rights to this “thing”.
He paused, hanging loosely in space with his geckos barely finding traction on the ribbed flooring. He glanced over his left shoulder towards the flight deck window anxiously seeking courage. Petroff, Williams, Abel and a curious flight deck crew looked on, expectantly.
‘Get on with it Makindra,’ Petroff said over the intercom. ‘It was a splendid idea two minutes ago. It still is,’ he joked.
Makindra gave Petroff a rueful smile, reminding himself that the next time he had a comment to make, to make it to his self, first. He took a final step forward and then stretched up and rested his hand on the craft’s side, half way along its length, just under its widest point.
He recoiled; falling back with his legs sprawled to hit the sidewall where he clutched frantically at a gas canister to stop himself bouncing around the hangar deck. Once he knew which way was up, he snapped around to look back at the craft, still holding onto a scream. His eyes widened in disbelief.
The craft was humming. Lights began to spread along the black surface, within intricate little grooves etched into the skin. Then, just as quickly, it subsided and died.
Petroff broke the silence at the observation window.
‘Are you still in one piece, Makindra?’
For a moment or two, Makindra lost his composure. His head bobbed around inside the helmet ring of his outer-suit.
‘Yes, sir. I’m flattered you asked. I’m mentally shocked, though not electrically, which is fortunate. I may have crapped myself, though.’
They didn’t need to know that. Stop the gibbering, he told himself. And then: Did that really happen?
‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he confirmed, finally calming down. He added a thumbs up.
‘Then dust yourself off, and get back in here,’ Petroff ordered. ‘OK, Abel, I’ve seen enough. Let’s get this thing back to Prebos. Now, please!’
They had confirmed it was not space junk, and it was not dead, though it was perhaps faulty. All it was going to take to exploit this thing was a little human ingenuity.
Abel was still staring at the now inactive or dead craft, seemingly unable to clear images of lights and the sound of gentle humming from his head.
‘Abel?’ Petroff asked.
‘Yes sir. I heard you. Are you sure about this?’
‘I am. To Prebos, please, and now.’ He turned to Williams. ‘I’m thinking we deploy one of our field hospitals to a deep mine, and set up shop. You can oversee things while Makindra takes a look at it.’
‘Yes, sir, but isn’t this still best handled by the ORF?’
Petroff shook his head.
‘If we do that, Thomas, we’ll end up buying what technology it has to offer from a rival corporate. The ORF will let it leak out; after all, it’s a supranational body. Let’s keep it a while longer and see what it’s got to offer.’
Makindra and Williams exchanged glances through the glass. They did not quite comprehend what was in store for them, but it was clear they would be carrying a heavy load for the next few months.
‘Abel, once we drop this thing off’, Petroff said, thumbing at the craft, ‘we’re headed to Trevon. And no dallying.’
30
As Scat left Lynthax head office and Petroff retired to compile an executive summary of their encounter with the craft, Thomas Irwin's soft-track taxi was close to dropping him off at his family’s home in Moss Valley, some 20 or so kilometres to the west of Go Down City.
The ride from the spaceport had taken him south of the city, along a single lane, snow-covered concrete road past a fork that had once led down into the rift, closed off long ago when the city erected the environmental shield.
After passing Go Down City, the soft-track taxi followed the old pioneer trail across the Gap Plain. It rose steadily to a crest line that marked the 300 kilometres long eastern edge of a U-shaped valley that ran north-south, parallel to the rift itself. On the other side of the crest, the ground dropped vertically for 200 metres before gradually levelling off to a broad but shallow seasonal river 300 metres further down in the middle of the valley. Scree littered the upper slopes, covered in patches of snow. Frozen bogs and moss covered the valley floor.
Thomas’ grandfather had arrived on Trevon some 60 years ago, one of several immigrants who were prepared to colonise a planet that was barely habitable for humans. His family had made its fortune brokering Central African agricultural land to the Chinese in the early- and mid-21st century, then moved on to trading commodities on the Western Commodities Exchange until the Resource Wars made futures trading with family money seem more like Russian roulette.
He had started out with access to a family fortune, but that was of little help in the first few years: the weather was immune to financial incentives and, in any case, moss farming was not that capital-intensive.
At first, it looked as though he would need to return to Earth, unsuccessful in his attempt to carve an independent fortune out of the new frontier. The truly difficult part was in staying alive and competing with the Spellings who had arrived a decade earlier and maintained a tight grip on the distribution channels through to the pharmaceutical companies back on Earth.
The turning point was a rapid and long-term decline in the weather that killed several moss families in their sleep, making continued moss gathering increasingly difficult. The lack of product meant the Spellings could not amass enough moss to meet their delivery commitments, a situation made all the more difficult when many moss farming families abandoned their properties, rather than wait out an improvement in the climate. That hurt the Spellings financially.
But the Irwins had a history of developing land to its true potential. Instead of packing up and going home himself, he bought up the farmers’ vacated land, and even helped them to buy their tickets for the trip back to Earth. He then tackled Go Down’s bureaucracy to transfer their farming licenses across to him and, once granted, he used his family’s connections in the resource trade to import more robust workers from Earth’s slowly vanishing Russian tundra region.
Over time, production was re-established, and finally the Spellings and Irwins had a reason to cooperate.
By the time Thomas’ father joined the company, the IrwinSpelling Corporation had built Trevon’s largest Outland structure: a 2.5 kilometre long bio-development greenhouse and moss product-manufacturing plant set into the leeward walls of the valley. In the years that followed, they tripled the size of their land bank and expanded the search for wild mosses to sites further along the valley, some as far as the northern tip; mosses that the Irwins and Spellings re-engineered for an increasing number of therapeutic and nutritional purposes.
Now IrwinSpelling was the 10th largest privately owned company on Trevon, providing jobs for 1300 horticulturalists, chemists and bioengineering experts, as well as several hundred less well-qualified packers and transport workers.
The taxi entered a tunnel on the plains side of the ridge, dropped a couple of hundred meters over the next kilometre of road, and then emerged out onto the valley floor, joining a road that ran north below the IrwinSpelling greenhouse, a fragile-looking structure made of clear glass and white pane
lling.
To the immediate left was the river, its banks covered in lichen and moss, all of them common varieties and of little use to the IrwinSpelling Corporation. Snow was still melting in patches along its banks. Above the valley’s eastern ridge, a weak sun appeared bright, the sky blue, rippled with streams of white.
Thomas smiled heavily. He may be 26 years old, but returning to the family home always stirred up conflicting emotions.
He smiled because there was the chance to see his mother and sisters again, to walk the dogs in the open air, and to be free to drive for miles out onto the Plain, or along the valley, needing no more than to feel the open space, or to sip beer with a few friends.
The smile was heavy because he was next in line to join the company, though he was less than keen. Prebos had been a claustrophobic experience, akin to living in a cocoon, but he had at least enjoyed the freedom it had given him from his father’s manipulations. It had also given him the opportunity to grow, and to make something of himself, without the sense that his family name was greasing the way. Like a caterpillar, he had grown wings and wanted to fly. He just had to avoid his father’s web.
Nor did he want to be the one to tell Old Man Spelling that his son was dead, or the manner of it, which reminded him of the electronic evidence in his notepad; evidence that pointed to a murder. At what point in my conversation with the Old Man do I bring that up?
Ironically, he may not need to. If history were anything to go by, his father would hear him out and then take control. But it would be the last time Thomas would allow him to do it. The very last time. He was sure of it …
31
Marvin had arrived at his main-core condominium on Third and Main, two weeks early and unannounced. As April opened the front door, he had tried to scoop her up and carry her to the bedroom but collapsed in a heap. He was still too weak. As she sat on his chest, she whispered sweetly in his ear:
‘You need a shower.’
After a second shower, and as April set about making tea, they caught up on personal news. Their kitchen was pathetically small so Marvin sat at the corner of the table with his back up against the door.
April’s news was all good.
She earned promotion last month, from a buyer’s assistant to junior buyer; not bad for two years work. Her family had sent several messages from Earth, each time asking after him.
The contractors weren’t due to begin work on the parcel of land they had bought in Moss Valley for another month: April had not expected Marvin to be home so early, and, anyway, she thought he would need a two week’s break to readapt to Trevon’s 9/10ths ESG.
Marvin then told her about Prebos and Gavin Pierce.
Everything.
She sat down at the table. Her eyes welled up. Marvin placed an arm around her shoulders and a hand on her knee, drawing her head into his chest. They were silent for a while, remembering a decent and honourable man.
Gavin Pierce, or Spelling, had been April’s life-long friend. She grew up with him on Earth, attending the same schools. He was an accomplished student, but as a teenager, he was difficult to control. It started with underage drinking and quickly progressed to joyriding, until his arrest along with his friends for breaking into the local liquor store and driving off in a stolen c-pod. April’s mother had accompanied Pierce’s mother to the police station to bail him out. She heard his mother scold him:
‘You’re just like your father!’
A father he didn’t know.
On the way home, she continued to complain that he was a “live one”, “wilful” and “trouble looking for somewhere to happen”. She did not know what to do with him.
In the months after the liquor store incident, it appeared he was beginning to settle down, and his mother grew more optimistic.
‘He’s studying more,’ his mother would say if asked, when all the time he was quietly hacking corporate mail accounts, exposing inconsistencies between their public statements on environmental issues and their internal memos. Again, the police arrested him, again he made bail, and this time they dropped the charges to avoid the publicity.
At university, he joined a group that protested the commissioning of a west coast fusion power station, citing its lower than 20% efficiency and the resulting permanent loss of water. His contribution was to hack the building contractor’s procurement programme and switch everything around. The financial loss due to cancelled and muddled orders amounted to tens of millions of dollars. This time the Economic Crimes Bureau arrested him and a Federal judge found him guilty of economic disturbance. He received a sentence of three years, suspended for five, along with 300 hours of community service.
That was around the time that April had married Marvin, an older man by 15 years, leaving for Trevon a short time later when he took the job with the Lynthax Corporation.
Several years later, after Pierce’s mother died in a vehicle accident, Pierce sold his mother’s Malibu home and spent most of the proceeds on a ticket to Trevon. He intended to look up his father’s side of the family; he was still unsettled; still trying to find his niche.
He stayed with the Cades at first, and they introduced him to their social circles, and were present when he met his father for the first time. After that, Pierce became more settled and at peace with himself.
He was surprised to discover that his family’s roots here on Trevon were so much stronger than any back on Earth. His mother had not really discussed his father’s family except in broad brush and his maternal grandparents would not mention his father’s name at all. It was obvious they had disapproved of her marrying Ted Spelling, a visiting professor at LAU where she was studying for her masters, and were terribly upset when she then disappeared across 117 light years of space.
He had also taken to the frontier atmosphere, the deeper more genuine friendships, the emphasis on trust and the willing cooperation. The climate did not bother him one bit. He decided to stay.
It was then that Old Man Spelling had asked Marvin to help Pierce get work with the Lynthax Corporation.
‘It would be good for him to see why we’re not keen on the Corporate Constituencies. He’ll get a worm’s eye view at Lynthax. Just keep his relationship with me and the Spellings out of the file. And keep him out of trouble.’
So Marvin had introduced him to his departmental head, talked up Pierce’s communications education and experience, omitted all reference to the Spelling family, and finally found him a position on Trevon in support of the newly commissioned mining operations on Prebos. ‘A dip in the shallow end’, Marvin called it, not expecting him to get a posting to Prebos, and not knowing just how far Pierce would go to undermine his new family’s enemies.
As Pierce waited to start his contract, Marvin helped him find suitable accommodation in Go Down City, their own apartment being too small for a long-stay visitor. April also helped him to fit it out, lending him some things they had brought from Earth, but had stored in anticipation of eventually finding larger digs, or, as they were about to do, build a place of their own in the Outlands.
They then continued to socialise right up to when Marvin’s contract began on Prebos 22 months ago. Pierce got his contract some six months later.
As much as Pierce’s death on Prebos was a personal loss for the Cade family, both on Earth and on Trevon, Marvin didn’t envy Thomas his job this afternoon.
The Old Man would feel the loss in spades. He had been so happy, finally, to meet his son for the first time, and was even beginning to believe that he could pass on his stake in the IrwinSpelling venture to flesh and blood, and not to leave it for lawyers to tear apart. Now his son was gone again—this time for good.
Marvin only hoped Thomas kept quiet about his suspicions. Spelling was not a man who looked to lawyers to resolve a grievance, and besides it would not be good for Lynthax to find out that others knew. He told April that she could not describe Pierce's death as a murder—not to anyone. She understood why.
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After a few minutes, April straightened up to clear the cups away.
‘It’s been kind of crazy here, too, Marv,’ she said, mopping her eyes with a tissue from the table. ‘There have been street demos every night since the company forced a second vote.’
‘They took another vote?’
‘Yes, of course they did,’ April said. ‘Did you think they’d let it stand as it was? They dragged the Corporate Reps back from their break and locked them in the House with the Publics until they did. Thing is, Lynthax has shut down the free news and is filtering the net, so we don't get to hear it all. You know, I can’t even send a purchase order to Urban Rebel Outfitters in New York—not without it bouncing back, undelivered. And half my incoming mail is being redacted. I can’t get any work done!’
‘Anything from the Inner-Rim?’ Marvin asked, meaning Earth, the stations and Mars settlements in the Sol system and the various resource colonies on asteroids and pseudo-planets like Prebos that orbited Sol in the vast Duipers Belt.
‘Nothing. Maybe Terrance knows some more. You could talk to him.’
‘I will. I was going to anyway.’
‘You know, it’s getting rather messy, Marv. The Corporates are worried. I spoke to Ara, the Earth Rep’s wife last night. She was in the dark as well, but it sounds as though her husband is running all over the place. It’s as if he’s been wrong-footed by it all. Maybe ISRA thought it could keep a lid on it, or was hoping the corporations would handle it better than they have. It’s hard to tell without the broadcasts or the buoy updates.’
‘So we also don't know for sure which Outer-Rim planets are with us?’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t think anyone does, Marv. Where did Pierce get his facts from?’
Marvin thought back. Scat had mentioned Pierce playing with the Pig’s communications. He must have hacked the central computer and trawled the corporate files. But April did not need to know that. The less she knew, the safer it was for her.
‘Corporate must have known. Pierce picked it up from there. Perhaps we should let people know.’
April could see Marvin was not thinking straight; he was staring unblinkingly at his teacup, drifting off.