“Carver: bring him in through Airlock One,” I order. “Kastl: Clear out, lock down and seal off everything in a straight path to Medical.”
“And evacuate all the adjacent sections,” Matthew chimes in urgently. On the base tracking grid, I see he was headed to Ops from his quarters, but then he stopped, turned back, headed to where our visitor will be coming through. He gets blocked when the hatches all shut and lock down.
“Halley?” I make the next call.
“I got the alert, Colonel,” she tells me almost instantly.
“Clear out your A-Deck ward and get us an Iso-room ready.”
“Then get out of there until we’re sure he’s sealed in,” Matthew goes further.
“On it. Give me two minutes.”
“We’ll hold him at Staging,” I let her know, then pass that to Carver.
I switch over to the heads-up in my goggles so I can watch everything on the run while I head out of Ops and down the stairs. Hovering ghostly over my vision I can see our “guest” getting led at gunpoint into Airlock One, and held there until the adjacent Staging Area can be vented. (The locks themselves are only big enough to transfer maybe four fully-suited bodies at a time for routine efficiency, but the connecting Staging rooms—usually used for suiting up—can be sealed and used as an extension of the airlock, letting the better part of a platoon move in and out together.)
The Blue Suit—who named himself Paul Stilson—gets gestured in by gun barrels, a half-dozen Heavy Armor troopers ahead of him and following him. Then he’s got a dozen guns on him in the Staging Area as they put him (and themselves) through a quick dust-off and contamination check. Then the section gets re-pressurized, and they wait for Halley to give them the all-clear. But no one unseals their suits, just in case.
Still outside, Sergeant Staley is holding Blue Suit’s belt of curious objects like a dead rat by the tail, keeping a heavy blast hatch between Stilson and his undetermined gadgets.
“Staley: Once they’ve gotten him to containment, get his belt secured in a glove-box,” I order. “Then put the box in an ordnance disposal container—treat it like a bomb until we know better. Then get it to Dr. Mann in the labs.”
I see the silver-masked head turn and look right into the security cameras, then give a little shake like he’s trying to assure us we needn’t worry.
I run past the Senior Officers Quarters toward the sealed hatch that would get me to Medical, which is where Matthew is waiting, pacing like someone is about to die on the other side of that hatch. I move to key in my override, but he grabs my arm.
“Where the hell to do think you’re going?”
The only answer I give him is to raise my eyebrows at him like I think he should know better, but he’s clearly thinking the same thing about me.
“You saw what happened,” he makes his point clearer. “That was some kind of advanced nano-shit. Even assuming that maybe it isn’t something contagious, what else do you think he could do?”
I watch in my goggles as the HA suits march our visitor—Paul—down the corridors toward isolation, keeping their guns up and keeping a respectable distance. But the blue suit just follows where they lead him, offering no resistance.
“I don’t like that you let him inside,” Matthew grumbles at me. “We could have checked him over on the surface, set up a shelter.”
“The hard hatches and bulkheads are bio-sealed and can be charged to resist nanotech,” I remind him needlessly. “And they’ll contain any blast that couldn’t hurt us from the outside. Besides: Assuming you’re right, if he meant to harm us, why hasn’t he done so already? We did shoot him, after all.”
“Colonel Ram, you need to see something,” Lisa cuts in on the Link, still up in Command Ops, but I see she’s only transmitting to Matthew and myself. She’s feeding us an image of the dusty floor of the airlock our guest was just brought through, zooming in and enhancing one set out of several dozen boot prints in the fine red sand. “His boots… They match the prints of our mystery visitor. Which means he—or someone in an ETE suit like his—was the one poking around here while we slept. And he did call you by name.”
I take a few breaths to digest that, realizing I’d been suspecting that just from the way he called to me, like he knew me, like an old friend. Or like a very friendly enemy. Still:
“As I was saying,” I give it to Matthew more gently this time, “if he had meant us harm, he’s had opportunity, especially if he’s already been inside, had the run of the place while we were sleeping.”
I don’t think that makes him feel any better.
Halley did her job, clearing the main examination ward in A-Deck Medical, getting the Number One Isolation Chamber ready. The larger Iso units are laid out as fully-stocked exam and treatment rooms, only heavily sealed and walled with thick clear acrylic, separated from the main exam ward by a clean-room that serves as an airlock into the units. Paul Stilson has let himself be placed and closed up inside Iso One, where we can observe him from what would otherwise be a waiting room. Armed troopers—still in their sealed full HA gear—surround his clear-walled “cell”, turning Medical into a high-security brig.
I watch through the thick multilayered acrylic as Stilson’s gloved hands gingerly unseal and remove his mask and light helmet, lift it from his head and set it on an exam table in the small sterile chamber. He ignores the guns and looks calmly at me.
Without his helmet, he is surprisingly plain: short brown hair, soft Caucasian features, friendly smile—he looks like a businessman, or maybe a politician. But his eyes are a shockingly deep blue, the irises almost metallic, iridescent like mother-of-pearl. He smiles broader when he realizes my assessment of his appearance, and casually sits himself up on the exam table next to his helmet.
“Not much to look at, am I?” he self-deprecates with a bit of a chuckle. “I’m a xeno-geologist by trade, Colonel. Though I suppose I didn’t go to any university you would know. I was only eleven Earth years old at the time of the Apocalypse—that’s what the survivors have been calling the Ares’ Shield disaster—living with my parents as they helped get the first terraforming stations up and running. And yes, that does make me sixty-one, by the Earth standard calendar.”
His voice is soft and casual, like we’re talking over drinks, new friends getting to know one another.
“It’s good to see you in person finally,” he continues when I don’t respond. “And awake, of course. So yes, to answer Colonel Ava’s suspicions, I have been here before, many times. Not a popular pastime with my people, however—I expect I’ll have quite a lot to answer for when I get home. Again. But we’ll talk more about that later. I expect you have more pressing questions for me.”
“Colonel Ram,” Lisa comes over my link, “for what it’s worth, his ID does check: There was a Paul Mark Stilson listed with the ETE crews who brought their children, birth date 2053.”
Matthew turns so that Paul can’t see his face, and gives me a glare that warns me not to engage our “guest” the way he seems to want me to. Paul catches him at it anyway.
“I really do mean to help you in any way I can, Colonel Burke. But I understand if you need time to make your own decisions about me. As you suspect, time is something I have in surplus.”
“You look good for sixty-one, Mr. Stilson,” Halley offers, calibrating another sweep of the chamber from the Clean Room.
“I’m not in any way contagious, Doctor,” he tries to reassure her. “But I request that I be allowed to wear my sealsuit. Just a habitual precaution—we never spend time unsuited in any environment outside of our Stations. Otherwise, my nanites are specific to my DNA and do not function outside of my body—in fact, they will break down almost instantly—they’re programmed that way during the Generation Ceremony.”
He stops himself, chuckles under his breath.
“What I must sound like to you,” he considers, “the things I take for granted. I apologize. Where should I start?”
There’s a hand-railing in
front of the big observation window, one of several in Medical to help the injured get around. I lean on it, getting my face close to the transparency.
“Are you injured?” I ask him.
“I’m quite well, thank you.” His hand reflexively rubs the spot on his chest where the bullet entered (there isn’t even a mark there now—his suit look pristine). “And no blame, Colonel. I suppose I actually expected worse. I’d been thinking about all the ways I could approach you, but I could think of none that would totally avoid violence and suspicion.”
Matthew shakes his head very slightly, arms crossed hard across his chest.
Paul unzips the front of his suit and then lifts an underlying mesh shirt to reveal his pale but moderately-toned chest. There is only what looks like a very old scar where the bullet entered.
“My nanites allow me to heal quickly,” he explains. “They also initiate emergency protocols: stop bleeding, compensate for any damaged organs, even process carbon dioxide back into oxygen right in my blood, so I can do without air for short periods.” He puts his outfit back in order and rests his gloved hands on his thighs. “I was implanted when I was eighteen. We are currently delaying subsequent generations until they are at least twenty-five. We take very good care of our children, Colonel, but our Elders feel that we must all know what it is like to live as a Natural—an un-enhanced and mortal human—for at least a short time before we become otherwise.”
“You’re telling us you don’t die?” Matthew doubts.
“Everything that lives, dies, Colonel Burke,” Paul says matter-of-factly. “It’s just that death has become significantly more elusive for us. As has aging.”
“You going to tell us how to kill you?” Matthew cuts back.
“I would be doing my people a disservice to speculate with you on that subject,” Paul answers coolly. “And I trust we have better things to do together than have you spend your time experimenting.”
“You have amazing trust for being bullet-proof,” Matthew quips.
“It was not pleasant getting shot, I assure you.” There is almost an edge in his voice now. “But I reiterate: We have better things to discuss.”
“Then let’s get on with it,” I interrupt. Then to Halley: “Is it safe to go in?”
“No detectable contamination, Colonel,” she confirms without sounding convinced. “But that doesn’t mean it’s safe.”
“Any other surprises?”
“Passive scans would say he’s a normal, very healthy thirty year old,” she assesses with an edge of irony. “And that includes an absolute lack of any gunshot trauma. Otherwise, there are no obvious implants or modifications. Whatever his particular nano-hybridization is, it keeps a low profile until it’s needed.” She locks eyes with Paul, who gives her his usual soft smile and adds:
“That would be an adequate assessment, Doctor Halley.”
“Anything else you’d like to do with him?” I ask her.
“If I was a researcher, I’d never let him leave,” she admits. “But I’m not, and given our current limited resources, I’m not eager to risk trying to extract a sample of his nanotech just out of curiosity.”
“You would fail, Doctor,” Paul insists calmly.
“Is it safe to let him out of there?” I go further. Matthew’s eyebrows go up and his mouth opens like he’s going to protest, but he keeps silent. Halley only shrugs. “Then let’s move this discussion elsewhere. Mr. Stilson, can we get you anything? Water? Coffee? Something to eat?”
“Coffee would be very much appreciated, Colonel,” he says with what seems to be honest warmth. “And please call me Paul.”
“Command Briefing?” Matthew criticizes my choice of location when we’re out of Paul’s earshot. “That’s nine feet from Ops.”
“It’s not like he hasn’t been there before,” I remind him of Lisa’s mystery footprints, now apparently resolved. “And he doesn’t appear to be armed.”
“Rick,” Matthew calls into his Link as we walk back toward Ops, unsealing hatches as we go. “Anything on our friend’s shiny toys?”
“They look like solid pieces of steel,” Rick comes on, looking simultaneously perplexed and intrigued. “Three identical rods, too small to be effective clubs. Three identical spheres. No instrumentation. Not even a seam. And we can’t scan inside—they just show as solid. We tried looking closer, but when we scanned one with an electron microscope, it began emitting a low-level EM field that blocked our imaging. Very intentional. I’d say his toys have specific protocols to resist examination. I even tried cutting one: the material was not scored by anything up to tungsten and diamond, which tells me it’s probably a carbon matrix of some kind. Lasers and plasma cutters didn’t even get it hot. Otherwise, they appear inert. Still, given the apparent level of nanotech that made them, I seriously doubt they’re intended to be decorative.”
“Meet us up in Command Briefing,” I tell him. “Be ready to ask questions.”
Paul sips his coffee—or the radiation-preserved powder that survived fifty years in storage with us—like we’ve handed him the finest drink he’s ever had.
“Real coffee is quite a luxury,” he confirms. “Sometimes it comes down on humanitarian drops, but we leave those to the Nomads and refugees. They need the supplies more than we do—we actually manage quite sufficiently off of our molecular factories, but our best substitute isn’t the same as the real thing.”
“Humanitarian drops?” Lisa asks him as the last of our team of “interrogators” joins us. Matthew, Lisa and I were already waiting when the guards—two troopers still sealed in full HA’s—brought him up from Medical (with all other sections still sealed off just in case). Halley came up with him, with Rick and Ryder a moment behind. Our last stragglers—Anton, Tru, Carver, Rios, and Morales—had further to come. (Carver, at least, had the decorum to change out of her Heavy Armor and into a fresh LA uniform. Morales and Anton are wearing their work jumpers.)
“I suppose it’s hard for me to start anywhere without leaving you behind somehow,” Paul apologizes. “But then, I don’t know what you know, so therefore I don’t know what I don’t need to tell you, if you see my conundrum.” He looks specifically at Matthew now. “Obviously I do not expect you to simply tell me what you know and what you don’t.” He sips his coffee again. “I suppose I’d better start at the beginning—or the ending, depending on how you see it… With the Apocalypse.”
“When your Discs blew the shit out of the whole planet?” Matthew prosecutes sweetly. Paul only gives him his usual grin. I realize it’s probably his way of keeping his patience with us.
“I can only hope to assure you that the Discs were not ours,” he responds evenly. “I cannot readily prove this, of course, though I hope one day you will be able to tour our facilities and get to know us better.”
“One day?” I ask.
“That decision is not mine to make, Colonel. I am not an Elder, not on the Council. And as I believe I mentioned earlier, my very coming here was not something my leaders approve of.”
“Well, that’s gained my trust,” Matthew quips. “Anybody else feel better?”
“I cannot say anything more on the subject of the Discs, Colonel Burke, because my own people do not know their origins, not even after all these years,” Paul defends himself coolly. “I could give you wild speculations, but I expect you have enough of your own already.”
“Are the Discs still active?” I attempt to refocus.
“No, Colonel Ram,” Paul answers with a hint of gratitude. “As far as we know, they have not been seen since the Apocalypse. Either their mission was completed with the bombardment and isolation of Mars, or they managed to destroy themselves in the process.”
“The isolation of Mars?” I pick out. “What happened after the bombardment, Paul?”
He loses the easy smile, sips at his coffee (but this time doesn’t seem to enjoy it as much), then puts his hands on the table, lowers his head.
“Nothing went unscat
hed, Colonel,” he begins with a heavy breath. “The ETE Stations were spared the direct brunt of the attack because the Shield platform was programmed to spare us—I can understand Colonel Burke’s suspicions about us, but I am asking you to trust me enough to listen—but the blasts cut us off, severed our Feed Lines, drove us inside to escape the radiation. As for everywhere else… the bombs quite literally reshaped the valleys. Colony sites that weren’t direct victims of the detonations were devastated by shockwaves and landslides and crippling EMP. Yes, there were survivors, and there still are, and I will tell you what I know of them, but first you need to know what happened between the worlds.
“Everything in orbit and incoming was destroyed. That meant Mars was completely cut off, with no ready means for relief. Worse, what communications did reach Earth before the uplinks went silent were still quite convincing that Mars had suffered catastrophic contamination from the reported lab breaches. What Earth could see of the surface using telescopes was only the devastation of the bombing. Radiation and residual heat from the blasts effectively masked any sign of life, as well as any ability to confirm or deny that there had been nano-contamination.
“Still, the first instinct was to send rescue. From what we could hear, the entirety of humanity was shaken by the tragedy, and every nation and corporation immediately mobilized to send help. The immediate response was one of incredible altruism, charity and unity of purpose. For a bright, shining moment, there were no wars, no enemies. Competing nations and corporations joined together. But sadly, it only took a matter of weeks for man’s capacity for fear and hate to begin to overcome their better nature.”
He pauses to look each one of us over, trying to read in our features how much we are following him, how open we are to believing his tale.
“We have every transmission archived,” he adds with almost numb calm, specifically looking at Matthew. “Our children study them. Our Elders have never stopped debating them. Because they give us a powerful insight into the nature of the human animal, what we are and what we come from.”
“What happened?” I gently refocus him, reassure him we are willing to hear. He sits back in his chair for a moment and gathers himself. Under his calm façade, I can feel that this is shaking him.
“First and foremost came the fear,” he restarts, not making eye contact now. “The old fear that began this whole tragedy. Fear of a plague that could not be stopped. Fear that those in power could not protect them, or would even put everyone at risk for their own profit. That fear created the Eco movement, made it rise to popularity.” I see him nod in Tru’s direction—obviously he knows who she is as well. “And that fear put the very instrument of our devastation over our heads. But despite the overwhelming horror of the tragedy it reaped, that same fear quickly began to undercut everything good in the nature of mankind.”
I can see his hands tremor ever so slightly as he sips his coffee.
“Man is a strange and paradoxical creature. And as a social animal, one of the things he does worst is take responsibility, especially for his own demons. We could hear it clearly in the transmissions from Earth: people began to rally behind a radicalized Eco movement, driven by those that would gain power by blaming, by persecuting, by feeding on the fear that science and greed had created a monster that walked this planet waiting for any opportunity to ravage all mankind. Ultimately, it proved a convenient excuse for man to disown his own sins, to scapegoat their own agencies. They began to turn violently on the very governments and corporations that would have made rescue possible. It was a remarkably easy thing to do—for the average citizen to deny that it was his own needs and wants that had driven the governments and corporations to support the research that they, in turn, were now so terrified of. Mankind had the demanded cures, demanded the longer life, demanded the new and better toys. Without that demand, that desire, none of this could have come to pass—Mars would have remained an ‘unprofitable’ rock in space, no more than a curiosity for scientists and explorers.
“But now that their fears had overwhelmed those desires, it was easy for mankind to blame the greed of faceless corporations and the corruption of aloof governments for everything that had happened, including the devastation that so terribly ended it. Within weeks, governments were purged, the great corporations were embattled and bankrupted, consumerism was vilified, and economies collapsed on a global scale. But by persecuting the perceived agents of this atrocity, they also unwittingly crippled any hope of mounting a timely rescue. It was only after the damage was done, after the rage had been spent, that wiser voices were able to be heard calling for reason.
“By then, hope was already fading, and the fear had new soil in which to take root: Weeks and months went by with no further contact from the surface. Now the fear told them that everyone not killed by the bombs was now dead anyway, victims not of the delayed rescue effort—again, mankind does not readily accept responsibility for its own sins—but of the still-assumed contamination. Now they openly hesitated because of the fear that returning to Mars would only contaminate the rescuers, and then Earth in turn, dooming all life. And that fear did what fear does best: it made people forget everything else. Then it turned them against anyone who would try to defy it. Hated science and greed had created a monster that could not be destroyed, you see, only isolated. Any survivors were believed to be beyond hope, and most people convinced themselves there could be none. The only ‘sane’ thing to do was ensure the imagined horror would not come home. They declared us all dead within the year, and we became their new martyrs: We died saving them, saving Earth.”
“They believed we were all dead?” Ryder challenges. “And just left it at that? They didn’t even try?”
Paul locks eyes with her. His jaw sets.
“It was easier for them that way,” he tells her icily. “And the ones that weren’t satisfied to leave it be were hamstrung by the Quarantine, by lack of resources and support. Small humanitarian missions were coordinated: probes, supply drops—all unmanned and one-way to allay the fears that a human crew would be contaminated, lost on a hopeless errand.”
“And there was no word from the surface, from survivors?” Lisa questions. “No calls for help?”
“A few messages did manage to filter back across space from the devastated surface,” Paul tells her, somewhat more gently, “from makeshift transmitters not unlike the one you recently attempted to build. But Earth could only hear fragments from them, and what they heard were tales of mass casualties and failing resources, failing hope. From what they could hear, Earth made their own tragic calculations, that most likely no one would be left alive by the time any relief could reach them. Within two months, there was only silence, as the last transmitter stopped sending. That silence convinced them that their fears were well founded, and excused them from attempting—risking, as they saw it—a proper rescue.
“We ourselves managed contact with Earth during that time, perhaps the clearest of any of the surviving factions because of our locations, but we could only give limited and unpromising assessments because of our distance from the colony sites. Then, after all the other transmitters had stopped, we also chose to fall silent.”
“’Chose’?” Lisa starts, almost coming out of her seat.
“Just as communication outgoing was fragmentary, so was what the few survivors who had means could hear from Earth. But we could hear the fear taking over: The UNMAC Quarantine, the fear of contamination, the steady reductions in rescue mission plans, the cold calculations that rescue wasn’t worth the risk of spreading an unstoppable plague to Earth.” Paul stops for a moment, raises his cup to his lips, but puts it down without drinking.
“Worse: while Earth had little actual sense of what had happened here, many of the surface survivors had even less. You yourselves are an excellent example: how much do you know of the fate of the planet, of the colonies, even with your superior resources? Your bases had the best communications with orbit until the attack severed th
em, and your uplinks were among the last to be destroyed. At least you knew that the Discs were responsible for triggering the Shield. The colonies were cut off shortly after the Shield targeted them—the last they knew of Earth was that Earth was trying to kill them all because of an imagined fear, a false alarm. Those that survived did very much fear that Earth would try to kill them again, that since they seemed so reluctant to send rescue, they would instead send more bombs. That fear came to rule this planet.”
“So they—what?—they hid?” Matthew questions incredulously.
“From even the initial attempts to re-establish contact, to call for help, it was already sounding like rescue wasn’t going to come,” Paul looks at him directly. “Or that if any rescue did come, it would be cautiously limited, that the survivors would be remanded to quarantine, even killed if Earth judged the risk too high. And if Earth even remotely believed there was still a risk of contamination, they might bomb again.”
“So there wasn’t a single survivor that kept calling for help?” Lisa doesn’t believe.
“There were a few. For some, their equipment eventually failed. But many factions actually forced their fellows to stop transmitting, and in some cases even killed those who would not cooperate—their fear of Earth was that great.”
“And Earth left it at that?” Matthew isn’t buying. “For fifty years?”
“No, Colonel,” Paul locks him with his eyes again. “Nothing is so simple. We’ve kept listening, passively. The Earth you knew has changed because of what happened, more than you can imagine. There was indeed a revolution of sorts: Once the general public—the most vocal majority, at least—finally began moving past their initial overwhelming fears of returning for a rescue, or at least found they could not live with not knowing what had happened here, they found that their bureaucracies were not so flexible. The Quarantine still stood, and there had been too much upheaval to effectively oppose it. The world economy destroyed, people could barely maintain quality of life, much less invest in rebuilding the infrastructure necessary for mounting a large interplanetary mission. And the new ‘culture’ wouldn’t support it.
“The Ecos had ‘won’ in a way. Even though their old leadership had stepped down in light of the tragedy, opportunists were quick to exploit their legacy. Governments could not operate effectively, there was so little trust in anyone’s motivations. Large corporations were demonized, as was the science that drove their research. It was very much like a modern witch hunt, a new Inquisition. Nano and DNA science became evil, dangerous, against nature and God. Even what good the research did in terms of cures for terminal diseases or ending hunger and pollution were vilified. Can you imagine that? Having a cure for cancer, a new food source, a way to clean the poisons out of the air and water, and being afraid to let anyone use them? Prosecuting them if they tried?
“It was like the whole world tried to turn time back before the technological age. It was almost a religious fanaticism: Mankind tried to do without toys, tried to live simpler, tried to atone for their sins. Their intent was good, but driven by fear and rage it became devastating. It’s taken them decades to begin to embrace nano-science again, and they are doing so very gingerly. They still have not managed to dare turning their eyes back to space, especially not to send any human into the void again. To do so would be like digging up our graves.”
We all sit in silence as Paul goes back to his coffee—Tru has refilled his cup, her hand unsteady. No one speaks again for an uncomfortably long time.
“It was not a case of no one coming, Colonel Burke,” Paul eventually tries. “They sent probes, and loads upon loads of supplies, all funded by charities. Drops still happen every few months even to this day, like rituals of leaving gifts of food for dead ancestors. But by the time Earth even remotely recovered from the global backlash of the Martian tragedy, they found they had no real means to get back here even if they weren’t terrified of the idea.”
“You said they sent probes?” Rick wants to know.
“Yes, doctor. Even the humanitarian drops were equipped with transmitters and sensors to look for survivors. But every one of them failed without sending a single promising message back, and Earth assumed the worse: nano-contamination, or Disc attack.”
“But it wasn’t either one of those?” I probe.
“No, Colonel. It was plain sabotage, simple human violence. By the time the probes and drops did start arriving, the survivors had been well-established in their own fears. They hid from the probes, and when they had opportunity, they disabled them. And further: they made sure that nothing they did could be seen from space—hiding from the sky is the law of every survivor culture. They took the food and supplies from the drops, but made sure to destroy any transmitters that might reveal their activity. They were happy to take the supplies—there is a market in trading ‘delicacies’ from Earth—but they saw the drops as bait in a kind of trap.
“Can you imagine what it was like for them?” Paul defends when we look like we’re not convinced. “To fight so hard just for the basic necessities of life? To breathe? To have water and food and heat? And all the while being afraid to call for rescue—even being seen—because you are afraid of what would come instead? Knowing you could never go home?”
“You ETE seemed to have had a fairly plush time of it,” Matthew accuses.
“We did not withhold our bounty, Colonel,” Paul tells him icily. “We invested ourselves completely into providing air, water, fuel. Repairing and maintaining the Feed Lines. Reaching out to any in need. But the survivors were not what they had been before the Apocalypse. The spirit of cooperative survival you had known—that same spirit Colonel Ram exploited to restore the peace between the Corporations and the Ecos on-planet—and you are still quite legendary for that throughout the valleys, Colonel Ram—they call you ‘The Peacemaker’ like they called Moses ‘The Lawgiver’—that spirit was quickly replaced. Humans revert to violent competition when resources are limited, and fear of your own kind becomes the rule of the land. They became militant, tribal, fighting each other over what little there was in terms of food, shelter, weapons… Scavenging. Preying on weaker groups. Raiding from each other. Killing.”
He trails off. Fingers his coffee cup.
“You said there was trade,” Tru wants to know. Paul gives her almost a frown.
“Trade is possible only between factions of similar strength. Balance is critical. It is too tempting for a stronger group to pillage a weaker one, even after all these years.”
“And Earth hasn’t sent a single manned mission?” Anton cuts in to confront the glaring inconsistency.
“As I said, the probes and drop transmitters either found nothing because the survivors made it a point to remain unfound, or they mysteriously stopped transmitting shortly after arrival. That only served to reinforce Earth’s fears of the worst. So while select dedicated groups continued to fund the unmanned ‘humanitarian’ missions, all manned missions were called off, then were banned by the Quarantine.”
“Then what about the Lancer?” I ask him before anyone else can accuse. “That ship that showed up empty last week? It wasn’t crewed?”
“It was crewed,” Paul admits after a tense pause, pain coming through his voice. “And I apologize: I should have clarified that there were no ‘official’ missions, and the ones that were not public knowledge were also certainly not intended as rescue. It was likely an illegal profiteering mission—we managed to track a small number of these throughout the years—struggling corporations or rogue government agencies would covertly break Quarantine to attempt to study and perhaps harvest what they hoped was viable nanotech. Apparently there is still a black market for secret military technology and nano-medicine for the very wealthy. Not that there also weren’t holdouts who attempted honest rescue flights—but the craft you have in your bay is both too expensive and too heavily armed to have been funded by a radical charity.”
“You were aware of its arrival?” Lisa asks h
im.
“We observed the Lancer approaching the wreckage of Tranquility Colony almost twenty-five years ago. Tranquility now consists of only one of its original three domes above ground, and that one is shattered. It is, however, teeming with wild growth from the original experimental gardens—the most likely source of the plant life you have been trying to cultivate.”
“There’s more of that?” Ryder interrupts him. He smiles at her.
“Much more, Doctor. Spread from Tranquility and Pax, taking root anywhere there is water and warmth. Seeds travel with the winds and with the traveling Nomads. The wild growth plays havoc on our feed lines. You actually sit in a fairly arid part of Melas. There are plains of scrub thriving throughout the valleys, and deep chasms to the East in Coprates that have become veritable jungles.”
“And the Lancer?” Matthew reminds him.
“Tranquility’s plant life likely drew them there—it is visible from orbit,” Paul darkens again. “But what they could not expect was the particular viciousness of the tribe that defends the ruin. Their ship likely flew off and hid itself as an emergency protocol when they did not return from their sampling foray. The ship’s simple AI probably mistook your transmitter signal for a retrieval call.”
“And these ‘tribes’ you keep mentioning?” I ask him.
“Life will out, Colonel,” his smile goes somewhat sad. “They have managed. They have bred—most of their current number have never known Earth except in stories, and all those stories end with Earth as the great enemy, the world-burner. Now, the tribes all have their own cultures, their own means. We tried to keep up relations—some groups still live quite well in the heat shadows of our Stations—but many we have had to distance. We have certain advantages, you see—and I do not speak of what our researchers have wrought from the nanotech experiments we preserved. Our Stations are all inaccessible because of their altitude, and fear has prevented more aggressive attacks.”
“Fear?” I ask before Matthew can.
“All groups recognize that the Stations are life itself, Colonel. As long as we provide that life, no one will risk attacking us. And there are some who have come to realize what we have become. Having lost understanding of their own ancestors’ research, they fear what we are. They call us ‘Eternals.’ Wizards and spirits. The Muslim Nomads call us Jinni. We do not actively dispel this illusion. It serves. It allows us to continue to provide what we do, and to occasionally intercede in the conflicts of the tribes when the delicate balance of power between them is disturbed—though this latter activity is frowned upon more and more by our Elder Council.”
“And are we just another ‘tribe’ to intercede with?” I want to know.
“No, Colonel Ram.” He looks me dead in the eyes. “You are not a part of this new world. You are the past. And you are the future. There are many who would be afraid of you, because of what you mean.”
“And what, exactly, do we ‘mean’?” Matthew blurts out before I can keep control of the conversation. But Paul just resumes his patient, inscrutable smile.
“You mean that Earth will be coming back.”
Chapter 5: Dissenting Opinions