Hearthspace, p.22
Hearthspace, page 22
Pulet looked more than uneasy.
‘She has a point again,’ Mott said. ‘We’re going to have to try to trust each other. And that would be a start. An exchange of confidences.’
Pulet nodded. ‘But even I don’t have the authority to share such secrets with enemy combatants.’
Mott frowned. ‘That’s – revealing. Before we showed up, what “enemy combatants” would you have had to look out for?’
Pulet actually smiled now. ‘We’ve had a lot of civil wars. Don’t ask. So we do have precedents in war-fighting in this kind of situation. And of making temporary peace, at least. Lasting centuries of it, at times …’
Ulla glanced around. It had been an intense day for Ulla, to say the least. Hours of tightrope-walking. Now she felt like speaking her mind. Well, they asked for it …
She glanced around. ‘It seems to me that we face a choice: either a fast truce, right now, or the possible extermination of both sides in a few decades. A generation maybe, or something close to it.’
That seemed to shut them up. Erbas and Pulet exchanged glances.
Mott nodded ruefully.
Pulet frowned in thought. ‘She always was a smart one. A fast truce. So you think I should make some kind of report to my government – and to you, to whoever is in command of the forces illegally occupying our skies?’
Ulla pushed her luck further. ‘And we should do the same. I’ll go draft something for you, if you like, Commodore, Protector. As a start.’
Mott looked startled, but once she’d found her composure, she nodded again. ‘Fine.’ She laughed. ‘You really are a remarkable young person. I only wish you didn’t have to be.’
Pulet said, ‘Actually I was hoping Breen would help me draft my report.’
Mott looked startled at that. ‘Are you serious?’
Pulet gestured at Ulla. ‘Quite frankly she is smarter than all my own officers put together, if untrained. Very well, then. You can use my cabin, Commander. Let us make it a joint declaration, from senior officers in the field. We seek peace. But we can’t commit to anything permanent – nothing we have no authority over. But, specifically, we of the Alliance certainly don’t sign up for the slave trade.’
‘Understood, Commodore.’
‘So long as it is just a draft,’ Pulet said now. ‘I’ll leave the talk-talk to you. Then, if we can set up a channel to send it, to both sides …’
As the impromptu meeting broke up, as Pulet left the room, Mott managed to whisper a few words to Ulla, discreetly.
‘The friendly-face stuff is – great. But you know the drill. When you speak to them, during your drafting, learn as much as you can. Learn what they know. Learn their true intentions – although they are the ones under pressure now our ships are in their home system … Even if the draft fails, we will have learned a hell of a lot.’
Ulla glanced at a viewscreen with a wider perspective. Huge, stately planets, dimly lit, crowded the view, like spherical clouds. Pinpricks of light that were moons, some presumably inhabited. Some, probably, larger than Earths.
‘There’s going to be a lot to learn,’ she murmured. ‘Look at all that.’
Mott grinned. ‘And you’re just the person I’d want in place to figure it all out.’ She made to turn away. Then hesitated. Looked back.
‘I know … how young you are, Ulla. I wouldn’t blame you if – look, just do your best. I know you’ll do that, success or failure. As you have all the way through this. And when you’ve won the interplanetary war I’ll pin the medals on your chest myself.’
‘In my retirement home,’ Ulla said.
Mott’s grin widened. ‘I’ll be in the next room.’ She squeezed Ulla’s arm. ‘So come find me for our report when Pulet thinks he can spare you.’
But now Pulet came stumbling back, clumsy in the heavy acceleration-gravity.
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ Pulet snapped. ‘Breen. With me.
Here, in my lounge. Where else? Where I will show you true greatness. And magnanimity. The most profound gift ever offered from one civilisation to another.’
Ulla, intrigued, was nevertheless tiring. ‘Will there be slavery?’
He frowned. ‘Very bad taste – you disappoint me. But come, come to see what I have for you …’
35
As always, Pulet’s observation lounge was a haven of deceptive calm, despite the fact that beyond the hull of this ship, and even within it, momentous events were unfolding. Despite the clattering of her own heart. Despite a longing to get to work on her draft declaration of interplanetary harmony.
Images were thrown up on the walls. It was like a college classroom, Ulla thought, remembering her own days in navy academies.
Suspicious now, Ulla tried to focus on what he was saying. Was he trying to front-load the document she was going to have to write – hijack it before she had even drafted it?
‘You see, child,’ said the protector now, ‘your imagination has been shaped by the small, cluttered worlds you grew up among. Worlds like sand grains – and scattered, sparse sand grains at that. Your Earths, your Venus and Mars clones … These are the models which nature bequeathed up, in our far distant home system.
‘But there are other possibilities. Other models. All you need is the imagination to see the superior.
‘I’ll show you true greatness. Or greatness to be. I will show you the Homeworld. Your Homeworld. The world I suggest be allocated to you, your Alliance, in the expectation of peace between us. An Earth, but perfected.
‘Why must we be left stranded on dreary copies of the home world, the original Earth? Oh, we evolved there, it represents a point of plausibility in that regard. But what other worlds might support us, worlds out there in parameter space that might do the job of an Earth, but better?’
Pulet waved a hand, his main screen cleared, and the image of a new world coalesced. And it looked pretty much like Earth, as she remembered images of the home world, carried across interstellar space.
Blue oceans, green continents …
‘You see, I have already explored the parameters of such a world … Room for the inhabitants of all of your limited, frigid worlds, you and your descendants, in perpetuity, in the embrace of the Sabre Hierarchy. And you will see why there is no need for conflict, now or in the future.’ His smile was wide.
She thought that over. ‘A single world. A small, single Earth clone—’
‘Why not? If it is perfect, why go further? And that will be the basis of a lasting peace settlement.
‘Now, the draft. You should draft an agreement in outline, with details to be supplied …’ He smiled. ‘Methodical! And soon it will be done …’
And Ulla bent over her work.
‘Already a well-located planet of the Hearth can prosper longer than the Earth, whose Sun will degenerate into a red giant in a few billion years; we have no limit on how long the Hearth will burn steadily, stable and safely. A slightly larger Earth might be advantageous too – it would have more habitable surface area, a thicker, more stable atmosphere. In addition a larger Earth will retain its heat of formation longer, its core regions would remain liquid, so that its magnetic fields would survive longer, and volcanism continuing would replenish the landscapes, leading possibly to even more than one creation of life …
‘All this I would give to you …’
Long before he had finished his lecture, Ulla, sitting quietly, gave her attention to the document she was to prepare.
Possibly she napped.
36
A couple of shifts later, giving Ulla a chance to grab some sleep, Pulet kept his word.
Again a guard was on hand to set up the tea-making machine, before quietly leaving.
This is a nut-house. The protector is a nut. Lectures on astrophysics, pictures of planets, while an interplanetary war is brewing, all around? But, who cares if you get an easy shift? Sooner this than patrolling the slave deck …
Except that by now Ulla would, on the whole, rather be down there in the pit, where those she was closest to in this half of the universe were suffering – partly at the whim of this man, this ‘protector’.
This wasn’t an easy ride for her, or not just that. It had always been Ulla’s duty to exploit this strange relationship for all it was worth – play on what was a weakness in the protector, a selfishness, a self-indulgence. You never knew what might come of it.
And, if nothing else, she was getting to witness some spectacular views.
She clung to a vision of Commodore Mott.
What would Mott do?
Do what you can. Follow any orders you can. Gather whatever intelligence you can. And save the day …
And now, Pulet announced, he was to present the glories of the Hierarchy of Worlds.
As she walked in, the screens offered multiple views, a complex wash of light, views obviously three-dimensional, deep, almost hypnotic … Every time she looked at the screens, she had to drag her own attention away.
Hearthspace. Even here, in this cold, sparse realm, it was fascinating.
Meanwhile, she found Pulet sitting quietly before the largest of his viewscreens. There was already a half-empty mug of tea set out on a small table beside his chair.
That was her cue, she supposed.
She made her way across the room, fresh, empty cup in hand. ‘Would you like more, Protector?’
‘Hmm?’ He barely turned his head. ‘More what? Oh. If you wish. And if you want some … The view, you see. Sometimes it overwhelms me, even me, after so long in space, so many missions like this, these journeys. I have explored so many worlds – so many types of world. So many discoveries. The gift of the Hearthspace.’ He fell silent, then suddenly seemed aware of her again. ‘What was it you said?’
‘Tea—’
‘Tea, tea, oh, very well,’ he snapped.
He held out his cup, and she took it gingerly. Refilled it, filled a cup of her own, passed his back, set it on his table, then sat down.
He didn’t so much as glance at the tea.
He waved at the image.
‘Look at it. Just look for a time, a few heartbeats, without analysing, just take in what must be one of the grandest spectacles this universe has to offer … Hmm?’ Now he looked at her for the first time. ‘And, just looking, what is it you do see? …’
Ulla looked. At the heart of it all, a brilliant pinpoint, wrapped around by banks of what looked like mist. The central point so bright, even as rendered by the ship’s sensor arrays, that it was all but painful to look at it.
She answered cautiously.
‘I see the Hearth,’ she said quietly. ‘A kind of star, a billion times as powerful as the Sun of the first Earth. Planets. Planets and moons.’
He nodded. ‘A crowd of planets – or crowds, for they are not all alike. Closer to the central fire you have small worlds – worlds and moons – similar to the world, or worlds, from which humans are supposed to have come. As many Earths as you like. Some as fecund, surely, as the original home of mankind. Others less hospitable … And some others more so. As I showed you. Further out, where the central heat weakens and much larger planets can form – Jupiters. Neptunes. Enigmatic names for us.
‘And – we have found worlds here quite unlike those known to the ancients, so far as we can tell from the knowledge they bequeathed us – not known at least in their own planetary system, the ur-worlds of the first solar system …
‘Have you heard of hycean worlds?’
She shrugged.
‘These worlds have masses between the Earths and the next main category up, the ice giants: cores of rock, global oceans of water, atmospheres rich with hydrogen, nitrogen … Worlds like small Neptunes, or large Earths – and not quite like either. We have made some explorations, studies of these worlds. There may be exotic flora and fauna down there in those deep, friendly oceans …
‘My point is that we don’t have to settle just planets that are dismal clones of those our ancestors left behind … Your Earths, Venuses, your Marses … Even your optimal Earth. You can take a lead from us – our ancestors. We, our ancestors, settled first on the ice moon of a massive Jovian world, we believe. Not on an Earth clone – on something quite new, different, challenging.
‘But the world we would give you, all of your people – all of you, and your descendants – a world already chosen, already planned – is not a second Earth, but a better Earth. In terms of fecundity, habitability. A hycean.
‘Every child must outgrow its mother! Think about it. We have done more than that. We have refined our definition of such a world, and have found candidates. As I told you. We have found you a better Earth than Earth itself! All this could be yours.’
She thought she saw tears in his eyes.
‘Beautiful. So beautiful! …’
As soon as she could get away, she reported all this to Mott.
‘He told me their end plan. He, they, are going to let us populate a planet. Some kind of optimal Earth. All of us, all the Alliance populations—’
Mott grunted. ‘All, no doubt, save the sick and the lame and the old … the useless … their bodies no doubt dumped into space.’
Ulla forced a grin. ‘An optimal world where we would live in perpetuity.’
‘No doubt with access to space excluded, and the cream of our children taken as slaves. Regularly.’
‘That’s no doubt the idea.’
‘But Pulet’s is a scientific dream. An experiment. A gift. And we, our children, would be part of the experiment. As we are bred for submission, I suppose.’ Mott nodded. ‘It does sound like Pulet – over-thinking, controlling, lofty. An optimal planet for life become an optimal slave farm,’ she said. ‘How … efficient.
‘And what slaughter in the process, as whole planetary populations are displaced and dumped into an empty world. However “optimal” in theory. A world stained with the blood of millions, more, even as the first native generation struggled to survive …’
Ulla smiled. ‘I take it the answer is, “thanks, but no thanks”.’
Mott grinned back. ‘You’ll make a fine diplomat some day. Actually, I’m serious. Go give the protector our provisional reply. Be polite. I’ll draft something for you, standing as I am as the only available representative of the Alliance governments.’
Ulla was not surprised when the commodore rejected the proposal out of hand. Actively mocking some of the language:
Any treaty between the two great clusters of mankind must include the freedom to select colonisation targets, without interference from the rival government …
Mott told Ulla that they had achieved something, at least discerned the scope of the Hierarchy’s ambition.
But these dreams, these future fantasies of fecundity and control, were for the time being set to one side, because the Alliance fleet was at last approaching one of the Hierarchy’s key planets.
And even the protector had to focus on real-world events.
37
Another couple of shifts, and once again Pulet summoned Ulla to his observation lounge.
And this time, it turned out, he’d invited Commodore Mott, too.
As they arrived separately in the lounge, Mott and Ulla exchanged their usual, raised-eyebrow mutual greeting. What now?
As usual the place was dark, shadowed – all the better to view the latest imagery Pulet no doubt wished to brandish before them.
But, for now, just dark.
They took seats, loosely strapped in.
Ulla tried to relax. For once they were alone in here, save for a single guard, a well-armed woman. Even after a flight lasting years, Ulla knew none of the guards’ personal names. But she knew this one was intelligent, watchful, if irritable. She was standing beside the big screen that dominated the room – an inert screen for now – in a position where she could see both the visitors, leaving her visor open. Her gaze flickered from one to the other, taking in their faces, their hands …
Ulla sensed that there hadn’t been as tense a situation aboard the bolt-ship since the taking of Patrol 45 in the first place …
A moment later, in walked Pulet.
Subtly, Mott waved a hand, caught Ulla’s eye. Relaying a similar message, no doubt.
Keep your concentration, Ulla.
The protector was in one of his regular, quite impractical robes, as usual floor-length – this one mostly iron grey, with what looked like a representation of chains, links of a dull gold, sewn in.
There had long seemed something foolish about the man. But he was a dangerous fool, Ulla always remembered. If she had been cautious around him before, since his murder of Ashe Vinna with his bare hands she had become wary indeed. Wary of his temper.
Especially since she had heard from Mott, in contact with the Alliance’s representatives on the invasion fleet, that the commanders had already outright rejected his ‘optimum Earth’ migration proposal.
Still, Pulet seemed purposeful.
Now, without acknowledging any of them, not even the guard, he walked straight to the screen and said aloud, ‘Mercury 43. Shipyard. Summary presentation. Most recently accessed version.’
Ulla wouldn’t have been surprised to see, even though they were in the midst of a developing battle, that he was retrieving images of what was another of his pet projects.
But this seemed different. Ulla noticed that Mott had reacted, if subtly, to that title. Shipyards.
The screen filled with brilliant, complex imagery.
Basically a planetscape, Ulla saw: what looked like a rocky surface, seen from above, pocked with huge, sharp-walled craters – and marked, too, with trenches, dead straight, spanning the arid ground.
And as the viewpoint – from a drone camera? – moved on, heading towards what apparently was a close horizon, Ulla made out a more complex landscape, and beyond that still more huge craters, some so large that they spilled over the edge of the image, crossing the jet-black horizon.
Most of this was presumably lit, made visible, by the point-source lamp that was the Hearth itself, dimmed by distance but brilliant, as it was throughout Hearthspace. But there were artificial lamps too on this world, evidently smart, many of them hovering, following the contours of the cratered ground.
