Exodus, page 10
“Signals?”
“Memories. Instructions to livestone, orders to animals, commands to network routines, even conversation between people—with added emotional emphasis.”
“Fascinating,” Josias said. “Can I get one?”
“Er, no. It’s a genetic sequence. But there are some places selling bioware implants they claim can do the job.”
“I detect a great deal of skepticism in that statement.”
“Honestly, I’ve never met anyone who has actually had one. But that’s how they’re perceived.”
“Let’s just put that aside for the moment,” Ellie said. “We came scouting because we want to know what’ll happen to everyone on the Diligent if we fly to one of the habitable planets. Will we be allowed to settle?”
“Yes. The Celestials allowed my human ancestors to settle after their arkship heard the Green Worlds signal. The human community act is still on the statutes.”
“Celestials?” Josias raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got actual angels living here?”
“No, not angels. Just the first humans to arrive in the Centauri Cluster, back in the Dawn Era. They started using some pretty extensive genetic modifications and ultimately elevated themselves into the Elohim.”
“The Elohim?”
“The first Celestials. They’re so advanced we don’t even know what they look like anymore. They’re the ones that terraformed all the Cluster’s uninhabitable planets into Eden worlds for people to live on. They also built the Gates of Heaven—” He caught sight of the expression on Ellie’s face. “Right. The Gates link quintessence pathways between star systems. It makes it very easy for Celestial starships to travel between stars.”
“Amazing,” Josias exclaimed. “So these Elohim things cracked faster-than-light travel?”
“No. That’s impossible; the speed of light is an absolute. But the Gates allow starships to travel at point-nine-nine-nine lightspeed between them. And they don’t need massive fusion drives and fuel to accelerate. The Gates do it for them, and decelerate them at the other end.”
“I’m still mightily impressed.”
“So the Elohim Celestials are the ones we have to ask if we can live here?” Ellie said.
“No, this is the Crown Dominion. You’ll need to ask the empress—well, her representative. The empress doesn’t much care about what humans do, as long as we obey the law.”
“Empress?” Josias sniggered. “What is this, are you all role-playing eighteenth-century Europe?”
“No,” Finn said flatly. “The Imperial Celestials own and control the six main star systems, and influence plenty just outside our borders. There was a brute of a war thousands of years ago to bring the Crown Dominion planets under a unified authority. It’s an empire all right, like every dominion. Some of them are absolute dictatorships, some are democracies, a few are even single-individual dominions, then there are the nomadic fleets of habitats like the Mara Yama Dominion, and you can thank fate your arkship never encountered them.”
“Right. So…We can just land and start to live here?”
Finn took a moment to drink the last of the weird coffee, thinking through the implications. “Technically—legally—yes. But there are issues.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for a start, you have no money.”
“Okay. So what passes for currency around here?”
“Kilowatt hours.”
“The Diligent has fusion generators. How many kilowatts do you want?”
“Yes, but it’ll be in orbit.” Finn did a double take. “It’s big, right? You can’t land it?”
“No, but we brought fifty settlement drop craft with us, and they mass a thousand tons each. They’re loaded up with every piece of machinery you need to start a society. Including fusion plants.”
“I suppose that’s an option. Mind, I know for a fact that the local authority won’t be too keen on primitive craft that size plunging down through the atmosphere.”
“Hey!” Ellie protested.
“When you approached Anoosha, you saw the space elevator?”
She nodded reluctantly. “Yeah.”
“But once we’re down,” Josias said, “however we get our people and equipment to the surface, we can start trading and buy ourselves some land?”
“Humans don’t own land in the Crown Dominion. They’re its custodians; it’s all leased from the Celestials.”
“That’s outrageous. Are you telling me that humans are second-class citizens?”
“No. It’s…not quite like that. We’re just separate from the Celestials, that’s all. It’s for the best. We can’t join their society. They’re a different species, basically. All of them, not just the Imperial Celestials.”
“Sounds like fucking apartheid to me,” Josias said angrily.
“No, no. They terraformed the Eden worlds; they built the dominions. Still, most of them regard us as—”
“Yes?”
“Well.” Finn shrugged awkwardly. “A bit…inferior.”
“Bastards.”
“But the empress allowed our ancestors to settle. We contribute to the Crown Dominion economy, and we have our own internal economy, too. That combination gives us access to all sorts of advanced technology—medicine, for one. Life expectancy for a human in the Crown Dominion is a hundred and seventy years. It’s peaceful, thanks to the rule of the empress. It’s stable—that’s a huge thing in the Crown Dominion; their minds can live forever, so their whole ethos revolves around keeping things steady. And trust me, some dominions don’t allow humans any residency rights at all. There were a lot of arkships that had to try and live on Remnant worlds.”
“What the hell are those?”
“They used to be Eden worlds. But there was a war—actually wars, plural—between developing groups who’d reached the Centauri Cluster. It all kicked off about eighteen thousand years ago. And it was a seriously bad time to live in; the conflicts lasted for nearly six thousand years. A lot of it was about territory, so that’s when humans started to modify themselves heavily. Those old original humans split into dozens—hundreds—of Celestial species, who all wanted primacy. So many planets suffered bombardments from space, or large-scale military invasions with some pretty horrific weapons. When it was over, the Elohim started building the Gates of Heaven to encourage trade, and laid down some basic laws for using them. That’s when the dominions emerged. They’re still struggling for dominance today, but they’ve turned it into a kind of giant cerebral game; it’s all about strategy and economics and ideology these days. They still physically fight occasionally, but it’s a last resort.”
“So Remnant worlds are old war zones?”
“And worse. Their biospheres are failing. Whole continents are toxic and scattered with ancient weapons. Trust me, the Crown Dominion is paradise compared to them.”
“But nothing can ever be ours,” Josias said. “Not without true ownership. How can we go back to the Diligent and tell people the whole journey, every sacrifice their ancestors have made, has been wasted? All we can ever be is renters in someone else’s civilization, with no vote, no independence for our culture, no freedom. That’s half a life.”
“You’re arguing legal definitions. I mean, technically, I…” Finn stopped. He looked from Josias to Ellie. Both of them regarded him curiously. The idea that had just burst into his head kindled an adrenaline burst. It was audacious, but if it worked…
“Yes?” Ellie asked.
“I own land.”
“I thought you said humans couldn’t own land.”
“I’m a uranic human,” he said slowly. His thoughts were racing, trying to piece things together into a logical sequence. All that time spent studying the thousands of laws, regulations, and directives that governed Gondiar’s society—years he thought he’d wasted—might finally be useful. It was wonderfully ironic. The strictures he’d risked everything to escape from, the gamble that had nearly got him killed, might actually help him achieve his goal.
“Yes,” Josias said. “So? You can speak to rocks.”
“No. It’s more than that. A lot more. Look, uranics are—” He couldn’t meet their gaze; it was embarrassing having to actually speak it out loud. “We’re cousins to the Imperial Celestials. Biologically cousins. One of the first things the Imperial Celestials gave themselves was neural induction, so they could continue the mindline.”
“The min—”
“Not relevant. The point is, uranics came about when Imperial Celestials, er, took a human lover.”
“So you’re half-breeds,” Josias said.
“Grandpa!”
“What? I’m just speaking the truth. Finn here understands how the universe works. Right, my boy?”
“Uh, yeah. So uranics are kind of like the top layer of bureaucracy on the human worlds.”
Josias clicked his fingers and grinned wolfishly. “But being uranic is hereditary, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It has to be, because we’re the ones who can communicate with the Celestial network, which is used for legal registration. The CIs manage the financial system, too.”
“CI?” Ellie asked.
“Construct Intelligence. Very clever artificial minds. But not sentient; nobody ever achieved giving a network self-awareness.”
“So the money is all theirs?” Josias said.
“No, it’s our money.”
“But it’s their currency, their finance network, they set the interest rate, and they’re the regulators.”
“Well, yes. Their economy was established long before we got here. They let us use it.”
“How very kind of them. But it puts them in charge of your economy. And whoever runs the economy has ultimate political and social control.”
“No, we’re a democracy; we have councils.”
“Can you vote to change the monetary system? To establish your own treasury?”
“Our society isn’t like that. It’s built for stability. If there are problems, the uranics work with the Celestials to resolve them.”
“Yeah. I called it: eighteenth-century Europe. You’re not the bureaucracy, you’re the aristocracy.”
“It’s not like that,” Finn protested. His cheeks were growing hot, and he couldn’t bring himself to confess his titles to them. Or his mother’s position…
“But the uranics are special,” Josias continued relentlessly. “You have privileges ordinary humans don’t have. And you have rewards that are reserved for you, as well. All for doing the dirty work keeping the humans in line for these Imperial Celestials.”
“Being a uranic isn’t easy. I hated what I was supposed to do. That’s why—well, it’s why I wound up here, like this.”
“Whatever you say.”
“But I admit there is the privilege of owning land. And I do. I own a lot of land back on Gondiar.”
“Nice for you,” Ellie said sullenly.
“If you’re really certain that you want your own mini-nation, with your own bylaws and culture inside the border, I’ll consider selling it to you.”
Josias rocked back and started chuckling. “Oh, will you now?”
“Yes.”
“So how come you’ve never sold it to anyone else, some other poor group of humans who want a taste of freedom?”
“Because it’s all down to economics.”
“Okay. Tell me more. I do know a little on that subject.”
“A society needs a basic minimum population in order to be self-sustaining. The land I own—it’s called Hafnir, by the way—is on the coast. It’s a good climate, there are livestone outcrops everywhere that uranics can sculpt into houses for you, and it’s twenty thousand square kilometers—easily big enough to support a small population, say two or three million.”
“Small population?” Josias said.
“Twenty thousand square kilometers?” Ellie asked. “That’s the size of some countries back on Earth.”
“Yes, but there’s no one living there. And I have no use for it.”
“So it has no value,” Josias said thoughtfully. “But potentially…”
“Exactly. If it had a human population, it would be valuable. To them.”
“So why has no one else offered to buy it from you?”
“Everyone on Gondiar has a job. The empress guarantees welfare and basic sustenance to every citizen through the settlement constitution. I told you, our society is peaceful and stable. And there’s more than enough room already to simply expand the existing cities and towns and farm estates.”
“Nobody is restless? Nobody wants to get out from under the boot of their oppressor?” Josias said. “I find that hard to believe.”
“We do have people who live and breathe freedom for humans. They’re the Travelers. But they have that freedom in the starships they own. They visit other star systems, other dominions. They trade, and some of them visit Remnant worlds to scavenge old tech. It makes them wealthy—or it breaks them. That’s what I envy. It’s what I want for myself.”
“Ah,” Josias murmured happily. “Freedom for people who live here isn’t a piece of land without government telling you what to do. It’s starflight. The adventure of the infinite.”
“Yes!”
“But my people, on the Diligent, have had enough of starflight. To them living on a planet under a big-ass sky with a distant horizon is what they crave. It’s the reason we left Sol. The dream of a new start on a fresh world.”
“Exactly. And if their children want something different, it’s all available to them on Gondiar.”
“All right, I’ll bite. What’s the price? What do you want for this land?”
Finn gave him a savage grin. “The Diligent.”
* * *
—
Ellie Aponi just didn’t know what to make of Finn, the man who’d fallen out of the sky. His arrival was insane enough, but the things he spoke of: Celestials and giant worlds and aristocratic cultures and his mind ordering stone to shape itself…She was as fascinated as she was scared of him and the massive civilization of dominions they’d found. Sure, the dream of a fresh world was the one dream everyone on board the Diligent shared and believed in. Yet somehow, she wasn’t convinced that Finn’s offer of Hafnir was the sweet planetfall they sought.
But we can’t carry on flying, not anymore. No one will stand for it. It had been hard enough to go into orbit around the gas giant and “observe” the two orbital bands of habitable planets. She’d never heard so much dissent being voiced on board before; it was scarily close to outright mutiny. Only fear of the unknown, and the unnerving technology they could detect, had allowed the captain to maintain authority.
Her grandfather knew that; she could see it in the way he was talking to Finn. It was more of an interrogation, chasing down into details. In his own way, Josias Aponi was as intimidating as the Crown Dominion. Ellie had only known him for a year; she was actually seven times removed from her ancestor. It had made being an officer an order of magnitude harder than it was for all her colleagues, as her whole life had been spent in the shadow of the legendary figure who built the Diligent: the sleeping icon at the heart of the arkship. By the time the ninth generation of voyagers had taken over running the Diligent, Josias had reached almost mythical status.
He’d been brought out of suspension as the arkship finished decelerating into the Kelowan system. Nobody was even sure he could be revived after such a long hibernation. It had been three hundred ninety years, ship’s time, since he’d last been awake. That was when they’d received the Green Worlds signal. The captain back then had wanted his approval before they turned the ship around and flew to the Centauri Cluster.
Thanks to that decision, they were in a star system with multiple habitable planets. But the Green Worlds signal had never mentioned that they would all be occupied. It was unfair to complain about that, she knew; the worlds hadn’t been settled back when the signal was sent, over twenty thousand years ago. So did he make the right decision for us?
“You said your ancestors settled on Gondiar eight hundred years ago? So how come there’s so much empty land left?” she said as they ate lunch. She’d fried Finn another batch of procarb rashers, and added vegpaste to the naan bread. He was eating it, but she could tell he really didn’t like the taste.
“Gondiar is a solid giant,” Finn told her. “It’s a low-density world, so the gravity is the same as Earth’s, but the surface area is four times as great. And the ocean covers forty-five percent.”
“What’s your population?”
“Two billion. We tend to have quite large families.”
“What about Celestials? How many of them?”
“They don’t live on Gondiar. Some visit, mainly to check up on their enterprise or estate every few decades. Oh, and there’s the Office of the Governor. That’s a Celestial; they change every time there’s a new empress. But they just sign off on all the official budgets the uranic marchionesses submit each year.”
“Sounds like a shitlist posting to me,” Josias said. “So why don’t Celestials live there?”
“The low mass density means very low metal content in the rock. That makes industry difficult. All the metal has to be shipped in from other worlds—mainly this world, Anoosha—and brought down the orbital towers. That’s expensive. So Gondiar developed as an agrarian world. We supply food to other worlds.”
“That can’t be economically viable.”
Finn just shrugged. “Worlds like Kelowan itself are proud to be unspoiled by farming. The Grand Families have massive natural estates, and they don’t want them blighted by agriculture. Then there’s all the space habitats. Building farms in space really is uneconomic, especially when you already have us to supply them.”
