Galactic Empires Read online

  “Maybe you’re right with the first one, and his pals in the Free Merioneth Forces are planning on springing him out of suspension just before CST shuts the wormhole.”

  “Not going to happen. Nothing and nobody can break into the Justice Directorate suspension facility.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Paula saw a nervous-looking Aidan appear at the top of the Main. She smiled. “What I always do; keep the file open, solve the case properly.”

  Christabel followed her gaze. “Of course, you always get your man.”

  “Yes. Always.”

  * * *

  WHAT PAULA FOUND OUT

  Nelson Sheldon was right about the timing. Twenty-one months after Fiech’s court case, and three weeks after a planetary referendum officially denounced as a shambolic farce by Intersolar observers, the senator from Merioneth stood up in the Commonwealth Senate to declare that her planet was regretfully withdrawing from the Intersolar Commonwealth to “pursue our future independently.” The Speaker wished her well, and there was a chilly silence as the Merioneth delegation dramatically walked out of the full chamber. CST immediately announced that the wormhole link to Merioneth would be withdrawn in three months, leaving enough time for anyone on the planet who didn’t wish to be Isolated to return to the Commonwealth.

  Out of a population of seventeen million, the number wanting to remain part of the Commonwealth was just over nine million. It took an awful lot of trains running round the clock to bring them out. Which made travel to Merioneth extremely easy, with an inbound train arriving every ten minutes. When Paula caught a train to Baransly, the capital, three weeks before the wormhole was due to be shut, she was the only passenger in first class. Most of the carriages were vehicle carriers. Emigres favored big trucks crammed full with their possessions. Local shipping companies were charging a fortune to transport containers of larger items. And the emergent national government was getting difficult about letting industrial machinery leave. The latest batch of restrictions covered all types of agribots; a lot of farmers were heading back to the Commonwealth.

  Paula stared out of the long window as they emerged through the wormhole’s pressure curtain. It was winter outside, with flecks of snow drifting through an iron-gray sky. The landscape here outside the capital was arranged into neat fields given over entirely to row after row of some vine equivalent, with brown leafless stems stretched along wire frames. Hundreds of small agribots rolled slowly down the lines, their ply-plastic tentacles pruning the vines back to their regulation two-meter length.

  Baransly itself was a sprawl of housing estates and industrial zones clustered around a commercial center that had already started to put up skyscrapers. The architecture was a little bleak and functional perhaps, but the city’s size was an excellent example of successful development for a world that had only been open to settlement for eighty years.

  By the time the train reached the marshaling yard outside the station, there were signs of law and order beginning to break down. Streets were clogged with abandoned cars and vans. The crates and boxes that they’d carried were now strewn everywhere, broken open to spill their contents onto the icy enzyme-bonded concrete. It was as if the goods of a hundred department stores had been scattered across the district by a real live cargo cult god. Gangs of kids and some adults were foraging the bounty. Then the train drew into the marshaling yard itself, and Paula’s view of the city vanished behind walls of metal containers stacked taller than the surrounding buildings, all waiting shipment out. Men in thick jackets with the Merioneth Nationalist Party logo on their sleeves patrolled the aisles.

  The train drew in at one of the ten platforms under the cover of a sweeping green crystal canopy. Every square meter of the platforms and concourse was occupied by a bad-tempered crowd. Armor-clad CST security guards patrolled along narrow clearways, their angler guns carried prominently.

  Paula slipped off the carriage to be greeted by Byron Lacrosh, chief aide to the prime minister, Svein Moalem, who was also leader of the Merioneth Nationalist Party. Byron and an armed police escort guided her down one of the clearways. A large limousine took them from the CST station to the Parliament building along roads that were still being cleared of discarded vehicles. Every few minutes, they passed crews of men and bots lifting cars onto big tow trucks.

  “You won’t need to worry about mining any new metal for a few years,” Paula observed.

  “Material resources aren’t our prime concern,” Byron Lacrosh said. “We hope to establish a culture that isn’t as technology-based as the Commonwealth.”

  “You’re going to go the agrarian route?”

  “We favor divorcing ourselves from the consumerist monoculture that dominates the Dynasty-ruled worlds, yes. We don’t shun technology, we just don’t see the necessity to incorporate it in every aspect of life.”

  “Appropriate sustainability, then?”

  Byron gave her an interested look. “You understand the philosophy?”

  “It’s hardly new. My birthworld is based on it.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’d forgotten where you came from, Investigator Myo.”

  The Parliament building was a concrete and glass monstrosity, intended as a vigorous statement of a new planet’s identity and prosperity. The result was the kind of design-by-bureaucrat-committee that Paula always found depressing, representing the exact opposite of the ethos it had originally been commissioned to promote.

  Svein Moalem’s office was on the fifth floor, with a curving glass wall that opened onto the hanging rose garden-famous locally for its cost overruns and leaky troughs. He sat behind a dark desk made from native kajawood. A broad-shouldered man ten years out of rejuvenation, with a neatly trimmed beard-following current local tradition. His light blue eyes were strongly contrasted with dark skin and mousy hair. Paula saw tiny luminescent green lines flickering along his cheeks to curve around the back of his neck. More OCtattoos shone on his hands. When she ordered her inserts to scan the office, she found a considerable amount of encrypted electromagnetic traffic emanating from him, or, to be exact, from the necklace of flat opals he wore. It was the kind of emission level she usually associated with sensory drama actors, allowing the Unisphere audience to experience their body’s sensations. The two people, a man and a woman sitting in front of his desk, were also broadcasting an unusually large amount of data, from similar necklace arrays. Paula suspected that every aspect of her interview was to be recorded and analyzed. A high-capacity cybersphere node was discreetly incorporated into the floor-to-ceiling bookcase behind the desk, but apart from that and several security sensors, she couldn’t detect any other active hardware. Not that she expected any weapons to be active.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me, Prime Minister,” she said.

  Svein Moalem nodded graciously but didn’t get up. He gestured to an empty chair directly in front of his desk. “I asked for two representatives from the Attorney General’s office to be present.”

  Paula glanced at the two lawyers flanking her as she sat down. “I’m not here to arrest you. In fact, nobody really knows if the Intersolar Commonwealth has jurisdiction here at the moment. You’ve declared independence, and we’ve agreed to recognize it in three weeks’ time. Anything between those dates is a very gray legal area.”

  “Yes, but nonetheless, they will insure my reputation is protected from unfair allegations.”

  “Allegations are for tabloid shows. I’m only here to ask questions.”

  The green lines under Moalem’s beard scintillated. “As a friend of the Commonwealth, I’m happy to oblige; we have nothing to hide from you. And of course, who can resist your personal notoriety? So let’s get started, shall we? I can spare you thirty minutes.”

  “I am the appointed investigator for the Dimitros Fiech case. Did you know him, Prime Minister?”

  “I know of him, sadly. His misguided organization was one of the main inspirations behind setting up our Nationalist
Party. Of course, we completely repudiate the use of violence to achieve independence.”

  “So you didn’t know him personally?”

  “No. My party’s goals were achieved by legitimate democratic ends.”

  “I accessed the report from the observer team on your referendum. They wouldn’t agree.”

  “Biased vitriol from those who have a vested interest in our continuing dependence and integration with their monoculture.”

  “Whatever. Fiech and his colleagues proved exceptionally resourceful, and they certainly learned quickly from their mistakes. He is the only member of the Free Merioneth movement we have apprehended so far. What they did required a large amount of money, at the very least. Is your government aware of where that finance originated from?”

  “Your pardon, Investigator, but right now the Treasury department has more pressing concerns than examining bank transactions from two years ago. Little matters like making sure we have a valid currency in place for the cutoff. You understand.”

  “Their money must have originated here.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. If we find out in the next three weeks, we’ll be sure to inform your Directorate.”

  “Could it have come from the same source as your Party’s money?”

  “We are not dignifying that with an answer,” the female lawyer said sternly.

  Svein Moalem gave Paula a small mocking shrug to say Out of my hands.

  “You set up your party after Fiech’s organization had already won Isolation from the Dynasties,” Paula said.

  “Interesting allegation, Investigator.” Moalem glanced at the female lawyer. “Do you have proof of this?”

  “At the moment, I’m purely interested in motives. As someone who embodies the Isolationist dream, can you tell me why Fiech sacrificed himself?”

  “I’m sure old Earth history is full of martyrs, all neatly documented, if you are that interested. But I suspect he believed as I do. And those who truly believe in the cause of freedom will go to any lengths to see it become reality. I commend his bravery, though, of course, I cannot condone his method.”

  “Yet his methods secured your goals.”

  “They helped focus the imaginations and aspirations of everyone on this planet. He woke us up to the oppression we labored under.”

  “I don’t believe the people of this planet are inspired by monstrous violence. Over a hundred and thirty people suffered severe bodyloss on the Nova Zealand plane alone. Your citizens would want justice for them and all the others whose blood was spilled.”

  “Justice, yes. But we equally disapprove of the vengeance we’ve seen your Directorate unleash.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who did you find guilty of the Nova Zealand crime, Investigator? Not the person who pulled the trigger, at least not the whole person. The man you have in your suspension facility lived a different life on that day. Your prisoner is not guilty of bringing down that aircraft. You hold a prisoner of conscience. A patsy whose sole purpose is to satisfy the masses to the benefit of your political masters.“

  “Dimitros Fiech committed that crime,” Paula said, doing her best to hold her temper in check. She knew that the prime minister was provoking her, trying to throw her off track. “There is no question of that.”

  “So already we see the difference between your culture’s rigid nature and our more liberal, progressive quality. Your laws cannot adapt to new circumstances.”

  “Fiech’s memories are an alibi, nothing more. It’s no different from using cellular reprofiling to change your facial features.”

  “It is completely different; it is his mind. The mind of the person you have suspended knows that he was on Ormal during the crime. You said it yourself in the deposition: He knows his office screwed up sending him there, he knows he paid the taxi fare in Harwood’s Hill, he was the person who watched the land roll past through the plane’s window, he was angry and frustrated when he arrived at the resort, he tasted the vodka at the airport bar, he fancied the redheaded stewardess who helped him on the plane, he had the hangover. That was Dimitros Fiech. Nobody else. His personality. Him! Your imprudent freedom fighter was someone else.”

  “Who was erased by his colleagues. And I will find them,” Paula growled out. “In order to do that, I need to comprehend the psychology behind all of this. So tell me, help mitigate Dimitros Fiech’s sentence: Why exactly do you want Isolation? What can you possibly achieve here that requires this drastic severance from the Commonwealth?”

  “That’s a very long list, Investigator. Starting with removing the contamination of a morally bankrupt, decadent society.”

  “At the cost of medical benefits? Your industrial capability is going to be reduced drastically.”

  “Not as much as your propaganda insists. We shall live here peacefully and progress in our own way, a way not dictated by the Dynasties or the Senate. Many people are attracted to such a notion. Millions, actually. Do you really begrudge us such liberty?“

  “No. I just don’t see what ideology can’t be pursued within the umbrella of the Commonwealth. It is not as oppressive as your party claims, as you are well aware. A great many reduced-technology communities flourish on Commonwealth worlds. What you have engineered here is radical. I’m trying to understand its rationale.”

  Svein Moalem sat back in his chair and gave Paula a thoughtful stare, very much the politician trying to convert another wavering voter. “You of all people struggle to understand? Forgive me, but that is hard to believe.”

  “Why?”

  “You were created and birthed on Huxley’s Haven, the most reviled planet in the Commonwealth. How the illiberal classes hated its founding. A world with everyone genetically predisposed to their job, a society in which everybody has a secure place. It is living proof that alternatives can work. Surely that’s a concept to be welcomed and admired?”

  “Its functionality is admirable. However, even I don’t approve of its static nature. Those humans can no longer evolve.”

  “Yet they live perfectly happy lives.”

  “Yes,” Paula said. “Within the parameters established by the Human Structure Foundation.”

  “You would want Huxley’s Haven broken up and abandoned?” He sounded very surprised.

  “Certainly not. Its citizens have a right to their existence. It is pure imperialist arrogance for outsiders to propose alteration.”

  “You see, Investigator, you make my argument for me! That is your answer. The right to self-determination is a human fundamental. Such a thing is not possible while under the financial hegemony of the Dynasties and Grand Families.”

  “Everything comes down to money in the end,” Paula offered.

  “Quite.”

  “I still can’t believe some abstract ideology is enough for Fiech to sacrifice himself.”

  “Hardly abstract.” Moalem waved at the city outside. “His wish has become our reality.”

  Paula pursed her lips, following his gesture. “I hope it’s worth it.”

  “It is.”

  She stood and gave him a small bow. “Thank you for your time, Prime Minister.”

  “You’re welcome, Investigator. In fact, I’d like to offer you a place here with us. Our police forces will need a substantial reorganization after the cutoff. Who better to manage that? You are celebrated and respected on every world in the Commonwealth. Your honesty and devotion to justice have broken the hatred and prejudice barrier. In a way, you are what we aspire to be.”

  “That’s very flattering, but the answer is no.”

  “Why not? Indulge me, please. I am curious. You left Huxley’s Haven, the only one of millions ever to do so. You found the Commonwealth more attractive. Why not us?”

  “I didn’t leave,” Paula said, feeling her shoulder muscles tense up. “I was stolen from my birthing clinic. The political activists who took me wanted to make a point in their campaign to ‘liberate’ Huxley’s Haven. Consequently, I was brought up
in the Commonwealth. I chose to stay.”

  “You found it more desirable than the most secure civilization ever established?”

  “I was created to be a police officer; it is what I am. There is more crime in the Commonwealth than on Huxley’s Haven, and it is the culture I was brought up in. It was logical for me to stay. Here I would never lack for challenges.”

  “So the activists were right then? The manufactured people of Huxley’s Haven would be able to settle in the Intersolar Commonwealth?”

  They could physically settle. Intellectually, I doubt they would be able to integrate. Myself and other police officers are a very small minority of the population. The exceptions. I understand that after my ‘batch,’ the Foundation changed the psychoneural profiling. Huxley’s Haven police officers are no longer as liberal as me“-she licked her lips in amusement-”a notion that discomforts the Commonwealth even more. Can you imagine a less forgiving version of me, Prime Minister?“

  “That’s a tough one, I admit.” Finally he stood, a faint smile on his lips. “Good day, Investigator.”

  *

  Two days later, Paula woke up to a call request from Christabel flashing in her virtual vision. She yawned, stretched, and told her maidbot to bring some tea. Then her virtual finger touched Christabel’s green icon.

  “You made it back okay,” Christabel said. “I heard it’s getting tough in Baransly. CST asked for a week’s extension before they switch off the wormhole; they’re worried they won’t be able to get everyone out before the cutoff.”

  “There’s a lot of people there,” Paula said, remembering the trip back to the CST station, the way her police escort had to force their way to a train for her. “What did the Merioneth government say?”

  “No.”

  “Figures. Moalem has worked hard to reach this moment. He’s not going to allow anything to stop it now. Especially now.”